Harry Potter and the Trouble With Neurotypicals: Book 2
by Fayanora
Summary: Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, is a young and abused Black boy with Asperger's syndrome, and is hated by his guardians, the Dursleys. A little over a week before his birthday, he discovers that he is also a wizard, and the Dursleys knew all along. Not only is he a wizard, but he's also famous in the wizarding world! An AU fanfic. Book 2 in the series. Books 1 and 2 complete.
1. Chapter 1

"Harry Potter and the Trouble With Neurotypicals: Book 2"

By = Fayanora

Note: Fanfiction. Not making money off this. J. K. Rowling gets all the credit for the Potterverse.

Book Two: Aspie Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Chapter One: My, How The Tables Have Turned

After getting off the school train at Platform 9 3/4th, he went through the platform with his trunk and saw Dumbledore there. He was looking very odd in a three-piece purple velvet suit, shoes made of what looked like snakeskin but was clearly (to Harry) dragon hide, his beard trimmed so it went no farther than the middle of his silver tie with green stars.

"Nice suit sir," Harry told him when he got in range.

"Why thank you, Harry. That's nice of you to say. Come, we are going to take a cab to The Leaky Cauldron before we go to your aunt and uncle's house."

"You trimmed your beard," Harry noted.

The old man chuckled. "Oh no, my dear boy; I didn't trim it. I..." he looked around carefully for eavesdroppers before continuing in a whisper, "I used magic on it, of course. It will return to normal later."

"Well that's good. It's a fine, distinguished beard you have, sir."

Dumbledore chuckled again and called a cab. Two cabs passed them by, their drivers almost crashing from staring at Dumbledore's suit, before one finally stopped. This man's jaw was open most of the time they got situated, and it was only with a mighty effort of will that he closed it again and forced himself to focus on the road as he drove them to their destination.

Once they got into The Leaky Cauldron, Dumbledore sent Harry's trunk ahead to his bedroom, and had Harry take his arm for side-along apparition.

"I warn you, Harry, the first trip usually makes people ill for a time."

"Thanks for the warning."

Sure enough, when they found themselves in a familiar but unexpected house smelling of cats, Harry bent over sick. Luckily, there was a bucket right there, which he vomited into.

As he wiped the sick from his mouth, he said, "Lucky this bucket was here."

"Luck had nothing to do with it, Harry m'dear," said a familiar female voice. "Dumbledore told me you were coming, and that it was your first apparition trip."

Harry looked up, and was astonished to see Mrs. Figg in her slippers, navigating a living room floor full of cats to walk over to him.

"M-Mrs. Figg? You're a witch?"

"Me a witch? Ha! Don't I wish. I couldn't so much as transfigure a teabag, boy. I'm a squib, I am."

"Oh. I thought squibs only lived in the wizarding world?"

"Oh no, no. Squibs are born to wizarding parents, it doesn't matter which world we live in. I live a little in both worlds, I guess you could say. Here, have some tea, get the nasty taste out of your mouth."

Harry took it and sipped, recovering fully at last. The tea seemed to work mostly by replacing one disgusting taste with another, but at least this one was more tolerable. "Begging your pardon, both of you, but why are we here? Why didn't we just apparate into... wait, never mind. I answered my own question." Suddenly appearing in the Dursley's house, with a loud crack? That would have been suicide.

"Yes, quite right, Harry," Dumbledore said. "It is, of course, rude to apparate right into someone's house. Unless, of course, you call ahead and get permission first."

"Well that's one reason," Harry agreed. "I suppose this was only possible because you're a squib, Mrs. Figg? A wizarding household would have wards, I'm guessing."

Mrs. Figg blinked, impressed. "You always surprise me with your intelligence, young man. Not that... oh dear." she turned red.

"Oh don't worry about it," Harry said, knowing what she was saying. "You were raised in a different culture, one with a different definition of racism. It's taken me a bit of getting used to myself."

After he finished the horrid tea, Harry said his thanks, and he and Dumbledore left to go to the Dursley's. Harry felt very nervous about this, very worried despite everything. After all, he was going back to the house where he'd been abused for 10 years, and the precautions Dumbledore had promised were still abstract to him, Netty the house elf aside.

It was only then that he began to really think about the house elves. They were something he was going to have to do more research about. He wasn't sure what he thought about them, yet, except that he got the feeling they were an entire species of servants. He wondered if they got paid, and if so, how much?

When the door of the Dursley house opened up, Vernon's face went from 'oh it's you is it?' to 'whaaaa?' in two seconds flat, as he stared agog at Dumbledore.

"Greetings, Mr. Dursley. I am Professor Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts. May we come in?"

Vernon said nothing; he didn't look like he could even _think_ at the moment.

"I shall take that as a yes, then. Come, Harry."

They stepped in, as Vernon gave no resistance.

"Vernon, who is it? Who's at the..." Petunia saw Dumbledore and she, too, imitated a Venus Flytrap with her mouth.

"Greetings, Mrs. Dursley. I am Professor Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts."

"Mummy, what's going oaAAAAHHH," Dudley shouted, running away from Dumbledore so fast he tripped over his own feet, and slammed his bedroom door shut. Dudley must have picked up on Dumbledore's wizardishness even through the weird suit.

"Dudders?" Petunia had been brought out of her fugue by her son's scream. "Dudders? Are you..." Confused, she turned back to Dumbledore, recognizing at last what she'd missed before. "You!" she snapped. "What are you doing in my house?"

"Your husband graciously let us in."

Petunia looked at Vernon, who was snapping out of his own fugue at last, then turned back to Dumbledore with a look that could have broken glass.

"Anyway, as I said, I am Professor-"

"I heard you the first time," she rudely interrupted.

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled gleefully. "Good," he said. "I was concerned; you seemed to have lost the ability of independent movement. Glad to hear that I needn't have worried."

The idea that Dumbledore worried about them made strange, conflicted expressions cross both the Dursley's faces.

"Well, now that I am here, I can do as I told you in my letter I would do, and explain Harry's continuing arrangements. Please, sit down, both of you. Dudley," he called across the house, "you will need to be here, too."

Neither of them looked pleased to be ordered around in their own house, but complied all the same. Dudley poked his head out of his bedroom and shouted "NO!"

"Dudders," Petunia said in a shaky voice. "Best do what he says, popkin."

Dudley glared at Dumbledore, then slowly made his terrified way over, sitting next to his mother.

"Good," Dumbledore said, sitting down himself. "Now, when I asked you two to watch over Harry like he was your own son-"

"You mean when you dropped him on our doorstep without so much as a by-your-leave?" Petunia shot back.

"Yes, sorry about that. But time was of the essence. The blood wards that protect Harry from Voldemort and his supporters while he lives here could only be put up within a limited time. And given our... _previous correspondence_ Petunia, I naturally assumed the two of you would be fit for the job."

"We almost didn't take him," Petunia snapped. "I don't know why I did. Moment of weakness, I guess. Should have dropped him off at an orphanage."

"Given what Harry has told me about his treatment here, and what Poppy has said about the scars she found in her examinations of him, it may have been better if you had."

"ARE YOU ACCUSING US OF CHILD AB-"

"YES, Mister Dursley, I am indeed accusing you of child abuse," Dumbledore snapped, the sparkles in his eyes gone and a tone of cold fury in his words. "And were it not for the blood wards and the threat of Voldemort returning, I would give him over to a kind and loving family like the Weasleys in a heartbeat. In fact, had I known what sort of a life he would have had here, I would never have left him here to begin with."

He sighed, calming down a little in a way that reeked of sorrow. "But what's done is done. The wards have proven themselves invaluable, having saved Harry's life just a few days ago. Even so, when I offered Harry certain protections from the three of you while he lives here, a part of me hoped he would decline the offer. But rest assured, you will not be abusing or neglecting your nephew ever again. I have authorization from the Ministry of Magic to cast certain-"

"MINISTRY OF MAGIC?" roared Vernon. "Weirdos like you in the govern-"

"QUIET!" Dumbledore said so loudly and angrily that even Harry fell backwards in fright.

"Better," he continued. "Now, as I was saying, I have been given authorization to cast certain spells on the house that will keep you three from hurting young Harry ever again." He stood up, waved his wand a few times, and then sat down again.

"There. Let us test it, shall we. Mr. Dursley, if you would attempt to hit your nephew."

Vernon glared suspiciously at Dumbledore, his desire to hit Harry fighting the knowledge that this was surely a trap. "Why should I? Not saying the little fr—EEK!" Mr. Dursley put his hands to his mouth in a panic, standing up and gesticulating madly. This set off Mrs. Dursley, but when she tried ranting angrily at Dumbledore, she did the same thing as her husband. Dudley took off running back to his room.

Harry laughed, remembering the tongue-tying hex Dumbledore had told him about, knowing this must be the result of the hex. Then he noticed that his uncle had been stopped from throwing things at Dumbledore by another spell, his arms being forced behind his back. Harry snorted with laughter at this, but refrained from more laughter out of habit.

"An excellent test, don't you think, Harry?"

"Quite, Professor."

They waited while the Dursleys finally realized the futility of fighting, and stopped struggling, sitting down again once the spell eased up on them. With a flick of his wand, Dumbledore made Dudley come zooming back into place as well. When the chaos died down again, he spoke.

"Good. Now, prepare yourselves, for I have someone I want you to meet. She will be Harry's bodyguard while he is here, making sure he gets enough to eat, and giving him a person to speak with, who doesn't hate him. Aside from friends he may wish to have over, of course."

Both Dursleys no doubt wanted to say something, such as 'he has friends?' or 'over my dead body!' but they didn't dare, for fear their tongues would be tied again. So they just blanched, instead.

"I must also warn you not to have muggle visitors over," he explained to the Dursleys. "For the being of whom I speak is not a human; she is a house elf."

The Dursleys didn't know what to make of this, and it showed on their faces.

"You should call her, Harry, as she is your tertiary guardian now."

"Um, okay Professor. Uh... Netty!"

A small pop and then screaming from the Dursleys announced the arrival of the short, green-skinned female elf with her large, batlike ears and large protruberant eyes; eyes that Harry finally noticed were bright, sky blue.

Luckily, the spells soon had the Dursleys down for the count and quiet. Netty was glaring at them and clucking her tongue disapprovingly momentarily, before turning to Harry. "Hello again, Harry Potter sir," she said, bowing.

"There's no need for that, Netty," Harry said uncomfortably.

She stood back up, looking uncertain. "Sorry, Harry Potter sir. Netty is not familiar with your ways, yet. Netty is doing better next time, sir."

"Netty, relax. You're doing fine," Harry said. "I know we barely know each other, but please, try to think of me as a friend. We're just friends, and you're just here helping out a friend."

Netty raised an eyebrow. "Um... okay, Harry Potter sir."

"And please, you can just call me Harry."

The house elf's face contorted in confusion so badly that Harry was concerned briefly, before she said, "Begging your pardon, Harry Potter sir, but Netty is not feeling comfortable with that order. It is contradicting Netty's training."

"It wasn't an order. Nothing I tell you is an order unless I specifically say it is, okay Netty?"

She relaxed at that. "Thank you, Harry Potter sir."

"If you need to be more formal, then you can just shorten it to 'sir.' You don't have to say my name every time."

Netty bowed again, stopping halfway as she remembered he didn't want that, and stood back up. "Understood, sir."

"Yes," Dumbledore said with amusement. "Netty here is charged with keeping watch over young Harry here. She'll make sure you're feeding him enough and treating him, at the very least, with civility. She will not go anywhere she can be seen by your neighbors or any other muggles. But I warn you, she does have magic that she can employ if she needs it to do her job as I have defined it. So if you don't want to see any magic in the house, I suggest you do your duty as guardians."

They made no response but to nod mutely, like their spirits had been broken.

"Good. Now, I must be off. Harry, Netty, I shall see you in September."

"Fare well, Professor Dumbledore sir!"

"Bye, Professor!"

He twirled on the spot, and disappeared with a tiny, barely audible pop. Once he left, Netty looked around the house, inspecting it. Harry, not knowing what else to do, followed her.

"Netty is afraid she is going to get bored here, sir. This house is almost _too_ clean. Is your family doing all this without magic, sir?"

"Yeah, my aunt is a bit of a neat freak. Cleans all the time, sometimes even if I'd already cleaned it. And sometimes... but never mind."

"Well, this is going to be... ah, this is being much better," Netty said, upon opening the door to his room. "Netty is having something to clean! Er... if it is being fine with you, sir?"

"Of course. Just make sure not to throw any papers out without consulting me first, unless I've already chucked it in the bin. And make sure I can find my stuff."

He went over to his trunk and rifled through it for a book to read. It was late, and he'd had a long day. But then he set the book aside, and took out his two-way mirror instead. He spent the next hour or two telling Luna about the day, while Netty cleaned Hedwig's cage, got Hedwig some food, and did his laundry for him. Before that, though, she brought him sandwiches and some tomato soup and insisted he eat, for which he was grateful, and thanked her. She grinned and bowed just her head, then continued with the rest of her work.

Life at Privet Drive now was... interesting. He no longer had to worry about being hit, or yelled at. In fact, the Dursleys hardly said two words to him all week. Nor did they look directly at him, as though afraid they'd lose their self control if they did. But this was far from a problem for Harry, especially now that he had Netty to talk with.

The second week back, Harry invited Luna over to the house, just to meet there before going to the local library together. Netty didn't like them going off out of her sight, but he convinced her that he'd never run into trouble in Little Whinging before, so she didn't press the issue.

"You must be Netty," Luna said when they first met. She held out a hand to the little elf. "I am most pleased to meet you, Netty. My name is Luna Lovegood."

Netty took Luna's hand, grinning. "Netty is liking you, Luna Lovegood ma'am."

"And I like you, too, Netty. Ready, Harry?"

Harry put his wand in his pocket just in case, and followed her out the door. "We'll be back by suppertime, Netty."

"What? Is you not coming for lunch?"

"I've got money, we'll get something out. Don't worry about it, Netty."

"Okay, if you is saying so."

Harry rushed out the door, walking arm in arm with Luna. They talked about interesting things they'd read for a few minutes. It was only when they were well away from number 4 that Luna changed the subject.

"By the way, Harry, Ron wanted me to tell you he's still waiting for a reply to his last letter. I told him it's only been a week, but you know Ron."

"What letter? I haven't received any letters from anyone yet."

"Really? Well, we'll have to talk with Hedwig about it when we get back."

"Are you sure he didn't use Errol? If he did, the poor bird probably passed out halfway here and is resting on a tree or something. That's assuming he's not an ex-owl."

"If he's not an owl, what else would he be?" she asked curiously.

"Never mind, it was an obscure reference."

When they got back from the library, they did indeed check with Hedwig. It was hard, but Luna thought Hedwig's exasperated and annoyed looks meant she'd been mysteriously losing his mail, and was really peeved about it. But with no better form of communication with her, they had no idea what was going on.

"I suppose I could ask Netty to look into it," he said.

"Ah, good thinking, Harry."

"Netty?"

Netty popped into place in front of him. "Yes, sir? You is wanting me for something?"

"We think someone's been intercepting my mail. Ron sent a letter that I should have received by now, and Hedwig informs us the mail has been vanishing en route. Is it possible you could investigate this for me, whenever you have spare time?"

She bowed her head a little, and said, "Yes, sir! Netty is looking into it right now!" Then she disapparated.

Over the next week, the mail kept getting intercepted, and Netty kept popping away to look into the matter. Harry had to resort to using Luna to relay messages to Ron. He had no idea about Hermione; did she have an owl? No, he remembered she didn't. But she hadn't phoned, either, and she had his number. He also hadn't heard anything from his three Slytherin friends or Hagrid, either.

Finally, halfway into the third week, Netty popped into place in front of Harry's bed, wrestling another house elf. This one was little like Netty. His eyes were green and shaped like tennis balls, and he was filthy, wearing a pillowcase that looked like it hadn't been washed in decades.

Netty is bringing you the culprit, sir!" she announced as she wrestled a stack of letters from Dobby and tossed them at Harry, who caught them and set them aside.

Harry got up and leaned over to look at the other house elf. When the elf saw him, he relaxed, and bowed his head at Harry. "So long has Dobby wanted to meet you, sir! The famous Harry Potter, who defeated the Dark Lord. Dobby-"

"Why did you steal my mail?" Harry asked, a lot more calmly than he felt.

"Oh sir, Dobby is terribly sorry. Dobby is come with a warning, sir. Dobby is overhearing something most dire, plans to make terrible things happen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year. And Dobby must keeps Harry Potter safe, for he is too precious-"

"That doesn't explain why you stole my mail."

"Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts! It is very dangerous for him now. Dobby is thinking, if Harry Potter is not hearing back from his friends, that he may not want to go back."

Harry actually laughed at this. "Oh my goodness... Dobby, if you knew what it was like here before I got Netty here to help me, you would understand. I hate it here! I'm only here to fulfill my part of a spell that protects me from Vold-"

Dobby and Netty both gasped.

"-emort," Harry continued, "and his followers. Hogwarts is my home. Dangerous or not, I _am_ going back. By the way, what _is_ supposed to happen at Hogwarts? What's the danger?"

Dobby gritted his teeth. Still being held down by Netty, Dobby banged his head against the floor.

"What are you doing?" Harry shouted, horrified. "Stop it! Stop hurting yourself!"

To Harry's surprise (but not Netty's), Dobby stopped at once. "Sorry, Harry Potter sir. But Dobby is almost saying something he ought not, and had to punish himself."

"Well I forbid you to punish yourself, Dobby."

"Thank you, Harry Potter sir. You truly are greater than Dobby has heard."

"Is there anything at all you can tell me about the danger?"

"Only that dark things are being plotted, sir."

"Does this have anything to do with Vold- sorry, with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?" Harry asked, a tone of sarcasm in his voice.

Dobby looked strangely at Harry. "Not... not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, no."

Something in the elf's behavior seemed to be trying to give him a clue. "Does he have a brother?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir."

"Well if not him, I don't know who else could do horrible things at Hogwarts."

Dobby was still behaving strangely. But whatever clue he was trying to indicate, Harry couldn't figure it out. He walked away to think a little, barely noticing Dobby and Netty discussing him; Netty told Dobby how Harry treated house elves with respect like equals, how polite and kind he was, and when Dobby asked about the rumors that Harry had faced Voldemort at the end of his first school year, Netty looked to Harry as if to ask him the same question.

"Yes, I did meet You-Know-Who a few weeks ago at the end of school." At which Dobby began to wax poetic about how brave and bold Harry was. It was distracting him from thinking, though.

"Dobby, I don't care how dangerous it is, Hogwarts is my home. My true home."

"Begging your pardon, sir?" said Netty. "But what is we to do with him?"

"Dobby, you work for someone else, right?"

"Yes. Dobby has a family, sir."

"Then why do you look so filthy?"

"It is... it is how the family is wanting Dobby to be, Harry Potter sir."

Harry examined the small elf. "Are those... are those bandages on your hands?"

Dobby sniffed. "Y-yes, sir. Dobby is not allowed to be out here, to be warning you. The only way Dobby is able to do it, is he had to iron his hands."

Tears welled in Harry's eyes, and he knelt on the ground by the small elf, putting a comforting hand on Dobby's shoulder. "I'm sorry to hear that. I guess you and I have something in common."

"W-what? What is you meaning, Harry Potter?"

"Before Netty came into my life, and the spells Dumbledore put on this house to make them behave, I... well, I spent 10 years of my childhood a slave in this house, beaten and abused, underfed and..." Harry shuddered, and was unable to continue. He had to take a few minutes to calm himself down from saying that much. He hadn't noticed before how bad these slips of his made him feel, but here with Dobby, he finally noticed. It was hard, talking about these things.

"Dobby is sorry to hear that, Harry Potter sir. Dobby is having no idea. Still, you is doing better now. And you is alive. You _must not go_ _to Hogwarts_."

"You're not stopping me."

Dobby surprised Netty and broke out of her grasp, running off to another part of the house. They ran after him, and found him in the kitchen hovering a crock pot in the air.

"Don't you dare, Dobby."

"Sorry, sir, but I must."

"Netty will catch it, Harry Potter sir!" she leapt up and it began to fall. She snapped her fingers and it slowed to a stop. But Dobby had vanished with a loud crack.

As she put the crock pot back, Harry looked bewildered. "What did he do that for? Why not just disapparate the moment he got free of you?"

"WHAT THE BLAZES WAS THAT?"

They turned, and saw Vernon Dursley standing in the door.

"Honestly, boy... one of those... _things_ is bad enough, without two of the little ACK!" He growled and went to the living room to wait for his tongue to untie.

Harry and Netty shrugged. Harry resolved to ask Dobby what he'd been attempting to do if he ever saw the elf again, and went about his business.

Later that day, Netty was getting dinner ready when Harry came in. Noticing she was carrying a very large dish that obscured her vision, Harry said, "Here, Netty, let me help you with that." He took it from her and set it on the table.

She sighed with relief as he followed her into the kitchen. "You is ever so polite and kind, Harry Potter sir. Netty is not knowing where you is getting it from," she said, glaring behind her at the Dursleys. "But it is surely not coming from _them_."

"Actually, it _is_ from them, in a way," he whispered. "I was their servant for 10 years. More like their slave, really. Being polite was expected of me."

"Oh, Harry Potter sir, Netty is wishing she is knowing back then and is being able to help, she is. Being a servant is no place for a wizard, sir."

This made him think about Dobby's words. "Netty, are house elves paid for their work?"

She shook her head very violently. "Oh no, Harry Potter sir. House elves is not paid, sir."

"So you're slaves, then?"

"Well... some muggle-born wizards is thinking so, Harry Potter sir, but, well... I is not really supposed to say this, sir, but we house elves have long memories, we do. We is passing knowledge from one generation to the next, through the centuries, as well as training our children to work. One story tells of how house elves is once free, long ago."

"Oh?"

"Yes," she said, shuddering. "Freedom is being scary and dangerous for house elves, though. We is being even shorter when we is living free back then, and there is many things in the world that would eat house elves."

"But you can do magic. Didn't that help?"

"We... we is having magic back then, yes... but that magic is being very weak, sir. The Story is telling how we is seeing wizards with many animals in their warm houses, protected from dangers by magic, and we Bargained with them one day. Wizards is getting loyal servants, and house elves is getting strong magic, protection, and food in exchange."

"I see. So it's supposed to be a symbiosis—a mutually beneficial relationship?"

"Yes, Harry Potter sir. But, well... some wizards is forgetting that. Some wizards is taking us for granted, sir. They is knowing we dare not disobey."

"And thus, poor souls like Dobby."

"Yes, sir."

"So what do you want, if not freedom?"

"We is wanting kindness, compassion, good treatment, loyalty, appreciation for our own loyalty, and praise for our good work, sir."

"Well I just want to tell you, in case I forget, that I do appreciate your work, and your loyalty."

"Thank you, sir. Netty appreciates it."

"Do you get treated well in Hogwarts?"

"Oh yes. Hogwarts house elves is very happy."

"How many of you are there, in Hogwarts?"

"Well over one hundred, sir. Netty is not sure the exact number."

He nodded. It was good to know, and made him feel a little better. They were sentient beings, and could talk, but their relationship with wizards was of a nature similar to that between dogs and humans. Still, he felt bad for Dobby; poor, mistreated Dobby.

"Dobby would probably take freedom, even if it meant his magic got weak," Harry said.

"If Dobby were freed, sir, Dobby's magic would not get weak. He is only one house elf. As long as most house elves is working, sir, the magic remains. All of us would have to be freed for our magic to weaken, sir, and Netty is hoping that never happens."

"Well if it means that much to your people, I have the same hope. I just wish there were something I could do for Dobby."

"Netty too, sir; Netty too."

[End of chapter 1]


	2. Chapter 2

"Harry Potter and the Trouble With Neurotypicals: Book 2"

By = Fayanora

Note: Fanfiction. Not making money off this. J. K. Rowling gets all the credit for the Potterverse.

Note 2: _Italics means a private thought but "italics in quotes is parseltongue." Unless it's an incantation._

Book Two: Aspie Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Chapter Two: Prudence

The next day, Harry tested a theory, by sending a letter to Ron with Hedwig. If that didn't work, he would have to rely on Luna to get messages to Ron, and maybe she and Ron could owl the others. He hoped, though, that seeing Harry's resolution, Dobby would give up on trying to waylay his mail. He was relieved, and surprised, when a letter arrived for him late in the evening.

"Netty sees you has got a letter, sir. Dobby is hopefully gone home then."

"I hope so too, Netty."

He read the letter, which was apparently Ron trying to sum up the letters he'd tried sending before. Luckily, Harry would be going to the Weasley's again soon. But knowing that this letter got through, he wrote letters to Hermione, Danzia, Antigone, and Angela, updating them on everything. Then for good measure, he sent one to Hagrid as well. He had a hard time figuring out how to get all the letters on Hedwig's legs, and couldn't. But then he looked at Netty folding the last of his laundry, and had an idea.

"Hey Netty, do you think you could pop over to Hogwarts and borrow four school owls and bring them to me? I've got too much here for Hedwig to get alone."

Netty jumped with joy at this and said, "Oh yes, sir! Netty is glad to be doing that for you. It is very interesting indeed."

"Oh, and if you could deliver this one to Hagrid before you go to the owlery, that would save a sixth owl trip."

Netty took Hagrid's letter and saluted. "Netty is being back soon, sir!" And with a crack, she vanished.

While he waited for her to get back, he tied his letter to Antigone to Hedwig's leg and told her who to send the letter to. She blinked her understanding and took off out the window.

Ten minutes later, another crack announced Netty's return. She looked very peculiar with an owl in each hand, one on her head, and another on one foot. He quickly relieved her of the feathery burdens, setting them on the bed.

"Thank you, Netty. You're awesome."

"You is most welcome, sir. Netty has this for you too, sir."

She pulled a letter from Hagrid out of her tea towel toga, which he took. Reading it, he saw it basically said that Hagrid was glad to know what was going on; he'd been worried Harry was snubbing him.

Soon, the four owls were flying away from the house, and Harry sat down to read a book he'd owl-ordered a week ago. An example of wizarding fiction, it was quite an interesting read. (Why Dobby had let that through, he didn't know, but that was a mystery for another day.) But this time, something in the book made him pause. It was a reference to a wand holster. Naturally, this made him think. Given all the things wands could do, and given that accidental magic was still possible with wands (especially if you moved the wand wrong or said the wrong incantation), it was remarkable that they weren't required safety equipment.

He couldn't let the idea go; he put the book down, and wrote a letter to Dumbledore. Since Hedwig had done so much lately already, especially with Dobby messing about, he decided to send it later. However, when Netty saw who he was writing to, she offered to take it to him. Shrugging internally, he let her do it, once it was finished.

 _Dear Professor Dumbledore,_

 _I was reading a book just now that referenced wand holsters, and I realized that wands are very dangerous, and should probably have holsters. I don't yet know where I can buy one, but I intend to get one for myself, and I thought perhaps I'd bring it up with you as a school safety issue._

 _Since Netty has volunteered to take this letter to you, I'll save myself some more writing by having her explain what has happened with another house elf named Dobby here recently. Thank you for your time, sir._

 _Hoping you are well,_

 _Harry J. Potter_

It was a bit sparse of a letter, but he was tired of writing today, so he left it at that. He folded the letter and handed it to Netty, who vanished off to Hogwarts again to deliver the letter.

Albus Dumbledore was upset. It had been a whole year since he'd found out he was wrong about the Dursleys, but he had recently been to see them himself, which had finally made the situation real in a way it hadn't before. Seeing their behavior, in combination with the images in their minds he'd gotten from his legilimency, he felt very upset with them and with himself for so misjudging them. He prided himself on being a good judge of character, and he had failed. Granted, he'd never actually met Petunia or her husband in person before that day, merely corresponded with Petunia when she was a child. People change a lot when they grow up, he knew that better than most.

Of course, he was more upset with himself for trusting someone so precious to somebody he'd never actually met before. What _had_ he been thinking? Had he been so impressed with his own cleverness at knowing how to strengthen the protection Harry's mother had given the young man, that he'd not even stopped to consider the foolishness of putting a child with someone he only knew from one letter when she was a child?

Sighing, he leaned back in his chair. _Yes, that had to be it,_ he thought. It was a known failing of his, that he sometimes got so caught up in his own cleverness, so excited that he _could_ do a thing, without really stopping to consider if he _should_ do it. But never before had this known failing resulted in something this bad. A child had been abused, and neglected. And considering how important this child was, and how important it was that Harry be whole and loving and good, it was a lucky thing indeed that he'd turned out as well as he had, under those circumstances. Sure, he had issues with headaches among other things, and some of that was due to his having what the Muggles called Asperger's syndrome – he'd seen that information in Harry's eyes, and his own research seemed to indicate it was accurate – but how _much_ of that was nature, and how much was nurture (or lack thereof)? He didn't know.

Then Netty came with a letter from Harry, which he read. Then she told the story of Dobby and what he had been doing, and as much about the why of it as Dobby could say. This worried Dumbledore even more; what danger was coming to Hogwarts? There had already been danger last school year. Danger that had resulted in the passing of an old friend of his. Dumbledore sent Netty back, and continued to brood. When Dumbledore had told Nicolas that Voldemort had almost gotten the Stone, Nicolas had been so horrified, he'd insisted the Stone be destroyed. Albus had tried to dissuade his friend, tried to come up with alternatives for protecting it, but it had been to no avail. Nicolas and Perenell were adamant about it; they did not want someone as evil as Voldemort becoming immortal and unbelievably wealthy, and they were prepared to die for their convictions.

He cursed himself. What had he been thinking, bringing something like the Stone into a school? And bringing in a dangerous Cerberus and a troll to help guard it, no less! It seemed like madness, now. He could not figure out what he'd been thinking at the time.

Albus read over the letter again. Harry was more concerned with safety at almost 12 than he, the bloody headmaster, had been lately. And how? He'd been through a war, for Merlin's sake! He should be more concerned about safety than most.

"Fawkes, please tell Professor McGonagall to come to my office."

The phoenix nodded, then vanished in a puff of flame, returning a few minutes later. Dumbledore waited patiently until there was a knock on his door.

"Come in, Minerva."

The door opened, and sure enough, it was his deputy.

"What is so urgent, Headmaster?"

"Sit, please."

She sat, looking expectant. He, however, stood and paced, arms behind his back.

"When you told me last year about Harry's situation, Minerva, I was shocked and upset. But it did not really become real to me until I saw things for myself recently. It has made me think. I was not sure what to do about these thoughts, however; not until I received this letter from young Mr. Potter."

He handed the stern woman Harry's letter for her to read. She read over it carefully. When she opened her mouth to talk about the second part of the letter, he headed her off by telling her what Netty had told him.

"But that is not why I called you. Dobby's warning is cryptic and will need more time to work out. But I do believe young Harry is right, about wand holsters. I believe we should add them to the list of requirements for all students."

"Yes, I see your point, Dumbledore, but have you seen Gilderoy's book list? The Weasleys and who knows who else are going to have a hard enough time paying for all that without wand holsters for," she paused, thinking, "five children. And you know them, they don't take charity. They won't even take help from the Fund," she said, referring to the fund that paid for materials and books for poor students.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Good point. Tell Gilderoy he is allowed no more than two required books on the syllabus. If the others are so important, he can use _gemino_ to make copies of his own editions. Tell him he is to submit his revised list by no later than 4 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. And add wand holsters to the list of required equipment, please."

She nodded. "I'll do that, Headmaster."

He nodded at her in the way they both knew meant she was dismissed. But before she left, he said, "And if you can let the others know I shall be attending tomorrow's staff meeting, I would much appreciate it, Minerva."

"Of course, Headmaster," she said before leaving.

With her gone, he sat down again, lost in thought once more.

A couple days after Netty delivered the letter to Dumbledore, the man himself finally sent him a letter back.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _This letter is to let you know that I will be coming to pick you up from the Dursleys at 5 o'clock tomorrow. Please have your things ready to go before then, and please warn your aunt and uncle of my arrival._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _Albus P. W. B. Dumbledore_

 _P. S. = I received your letter, and we shall discuss it in person once we have arrived at the Burrow, as I feel a letter would be too impersonal._

Throwing the letter aside, he rushed to get his things together, but Netty couldn't stand him just tossing stuff in the trunk, and dug it out to organize it for him. He rolled his eyes and let her carry on. Instead, he focused on getting all his stuff onto the bed and letting her do it.

While she did that, Harry went downstairs and coughed to get his aunt and uncle's attention.

"What is it now, boy?" Vernon asked irritably.

"Professor Dumbledore is coming to pick me up tomorrow. He'll be taking me to a friend's house for the rest of the summer."

"Good. What time is this... man... coming to get you?"

"Five PM, the letter says."

"Well you let him know he'll be getting you and leaving, there'll be no mucking about, understand?"

"I understand. I'll tell him."

Luckily, Hedwig had been back for over a day, having brought a letter from Antigone with her. He went back up to his room and wrote a quick reply.

"Got a letter for you, Hedwig. It's for Professor Dumbledore," he said as he tied it to her leg. "Go on to Ron's place when you're done, I'll be there tomorrow in the afternoon. Ron can take care of you until then." She blinked her understanding and flew out the window with it.

The next day, he spent switching between pacing his room and attempting to read, until he finally took his trunk down to wait for Dumbledore. His aunt and uncle were dressed in their best clothes, hoping to be a little intimidating.

At five o'clock exactly, the doorbell rang. Harry ran to get it. Dumbledore was wearing a completely different suit, one which was yellow with blue stars and looked like it was made of silk. He also wore a bright purple stetson.

It went surprisingly smoothly, considering his aunt and uncle could only stand there grimacing or biting their tongues. They weren't sure the enchantments prevented them from speaking their mind about Dumbledore in front of Harry, and they weren't about to test it. So Dumbledore came in, helped Harry with his trunk, and they left for Mrs. Figg's place to disapparate.

After getting to the Burrow but before anyone had noticed them, Dumbledore said to Harry, "The letter we shall discuss in front of the others. First, though... I think I know what Dobby was trying to do by dropping the crock pot."

"Oh? What's that, Professor?"

"I believe Dobby did not realize that Netty being there meant I had gotten number 4 added to the list of wizarding households, as part of the strings I pulled to make your circumstances there more bearable. Which means that Dobby was laboring under the misconception that doing magic in your aunt and uncle's house would get you in trouble with the Ministry."

"I don't quite understand, Professor."

"Well, the Trace can only detect magic done in the home or basic area of an underage witch or wizard, and cannot detect exactly who did the magic. So had your relatives' house still been listed as a Muggle household, Dobby's actions would have gotten you in trouble for using magic out of school."

"Do you mean, sir, that kids in wizarding households can do magic all they want and the Ministry would never know?"

"That is correct in essentials, yes. The Ministry relies on wizarding parents keeping their children in check."

"I suppose that makes sense, given the Statute of Secrecy. Still seems a little unfair to me, though. Without Netty there, there would have been no witnesses to what would have been a very odd situation of a house elf in a Muggle house."

"Yes. Luckily for you, Dobby's plan did not work. I believe Netty was a surprise to him."

They were approaching the house now, and Molly Weasley came running up to meet them. Harry prepared himself mentally for her to make some comment about how underfed he was, but she didn't this time. He wondered if that meant Netty's meals had helped him fill out a bit. Then too, their first week there, Netty had bemoaned the state of his hand-me-downs from Dudley, and with his permission, she had shrunk them so they fit him properly; so that may have helped his appearance, too.

When he got inside, he was only mildly surprised to see Luna calmly sitting at the table nursing a cup of tea. Hearing him come in, she stood up and held her arms open. Ginny, who had been at the table too, got up and left as Harry and Luna embraced.

"Harry!" Luna said. "It's been much too long since I've gotten to touch you. Touching someone you care about is the only way to keep away Voojles, you know."

"Voojles?" he asked curiously.

"Yes. They're related to Dementors, but they're tiny and invisble. They make you sad but they're not very dangerous."

"Well I'd be glad to help you ward off Voojles," he said, holding her hands.

Fred and George came in and wolf-whistled. Luna didn't react; Harry just rolled his eyes.

"Fred! George! That's enough of your teasing, both of you. Why don't you go outside, unless you'd rather I give you work to do?"

"Sorry Mum," they said in twin-stereo. "We'll be good," they said, slipping outside.

"Hmph," Mrs. Weasley said good-naturedly. "That'll be the day. Hello, Harry my dear, would you like some tea?"

"Yes please, Mrs. Weasley."

"Such a polite young man, you are. I know some people who could do with taking lessons from you."

As Molly bustled around the kitchen preparing Harry's tea, he and Luna got to talking. It was only after several minutes of this that they noticed Dumbledore had come in and was sitting down.

"Dumbledore!" Molly said, astounded. "Would you like some tea as well?"

"No thank you, Molly. My bladder would protest if I had anything else to drink right now. Anyway, Harry?"

"Yes, sir?"

"I mentioned in my letter that I would discuss your recommendation with you here. If you're amenable to it, I should like to get that out of the way now so you can get on with spending time with the lovely Ms. Lovegood, even though the others are not present."

Harry blushed, his brown cheeks darkening from it, but he nodded.

"Well I thought it was an excellent suggestion, the wand holsters; Alastor, I know, would approve."

"Alastor?"

"Alastor Moody, an old colleague of mine, an Auror. Dark wizard catcher," he said when Harry looked confused. "Yes, he's always bemoaning the lack of wand safety. Which reminds me, I should inform him of this change, he'll be interested to know."

"Okay," Harry said, curious why Dumbledore hadn't said this in a letter.

"Dumbledore," Molly said, "did I hear you say something about wand holsters?"

"Yes, Molly. Wand holsters, thanks to Harry's suggestion, are now required equipment for all students."

Mrs. Weasley beamed. "Excellent! I used to use one, but lately I've been using my wand so much I'm afraid I've lost track of it. Oh, let's see," she said, absent-mindedly setting down Harry's tea and wandering off talking to herself, "five wand holsters to buy now, and who knows what the book lists even look like yet..."

"Anyway, Harry, there is more I wish to discuss."

"Okay, sir."

"It seems you and your friends made some other suggestions, which came up in a staff meeting. Suggestions I very much agreed with. Thanks to you, Harry, there is now a Wizard Studies class for Muggleborn students."

"Wow, cool. Can I sign up?"

"Yes, I thought you might like to, given that while you're technically halfblood, you were raised by Muggles. Professor McGonagall assumed you would want to join."

"Who's teaching it, sir?"

"Why, I am, Harry."

Harry's and Luna's eyes both went wide. "You'll be teaching classes, Professor?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "Why yes, Harry, I will. After all, I used to teach Transfiguration. But since that position is taken, and I have the necessary skills, I decided to take up the post."

"Well that sure will be different. I look forward to your classes, sir."

"Thank you for your kind words, Harry. Or, as I shall have to get used to saying again, Mr. Potter. And Ms. Lovegood," he said, nodding at her.

"Why thank you, Professor Dumbledore."

Dumbledore smiled. "Now let's see... ah yes, and one other thing. Your Muggle Academia Club is also being given official club status, and as such, you will be allowed to put up signs about it on all the House notice boards."

"Cool, thanks! Sir."

"You are again welcome. Oh, and that reminds me, Muggle Studies will also be a required course for all wizard-raised students below NEWT level. We decided the NEWT students had quite enough to be going on with as it is."

Harry beamed. "Wow! Makes me almost wish I could go, if only to see Draco Malfoy's reactions."

The three of them laughed about that.

"So who's teaching Muggle Studies?"

"A kind and gentle soul named Charity Burbage; she has been our Muggle Studies teacher ever since Professor Quirrell switched to Defense Against The Dark Arts."

"That evil git, teaching Muggle Studies?"

"Yes, in hindsight maybe not the best choice, but he showed no signs of being evil until long after he returned from a sabbatical to study his new subject in person the summer before he taught.

"Anyway, Harry, I believe that is all. Feel free to tell the others these things, even though they will find out soon enough. I must be getting back to Hogwarts. I shall see you again in September, the both of you." He winked at them and left the room, saying goodbye to Mrs. Weasley before he left.

Harry had a good time at the Weasley's the rest of that summer. True, his news of a new required course that most of the Weasleys would have to take and he didn't caused a mixed response. Mr. Weasley, of course, was fascinated. It turned out Muggle Studies hadn't been offered in Hogwarts at all back in his day, or he would have been among those taking it. He was looking forward to learning second-hand from his children.

What caused a bit more controversy even than that, was Harry inviting his three Slytherin friends over to his birthday party. He had at least asked the Weasley's permission first, but it was only when he asked that he remembered that he'd never sent any letters to the Weasley's parents; it had never occurred to him to do so. And Ron had apparently forgotten to mention the three Slytherins, too. In the end, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley decided to trust his judgment, but they were disappointingly wary of the three girls during the party, even after he'd explained their role in the adventures his previous year.

"Don't worry, Harry," Antigone had told him at one point. "We're used to it by now. And honestly, I'm kind of surprised they're taking it even this well. Our two Houses have been at odds... well, ever since Moldywart came to power. Maybe even before then."

"You shouldn't have to be used to it. There are bad people in every House, and good people too."

"Yeah, well... something else to work on, eh?"

He nodded his agreement, and continued eating his cake, trying to ignore the fact that either Mr. or Mrs. Weasley were always somewhere they could keep an eye out on the three Slytherins.

Of course, it didn't help that Danzia had brought a python to the party, wanting to see Harry's parseltongue firsthand. Not wanting to make Mrs. Weasley any more uncomfortable by revealing this gift of his to her or Mr. Weasley, he and the others - even Ron and Hermione, and even Ginny - snuck off to where they normally played Quidditch to watch.

"Her name's Circe," Danzia explained. "Go on, say something to her."

"Uh," he said, looking at the drowsy snake. _"Hello. How are you?"_

The snake looked up at him, as though astonished. _"You speak our language?"_ it asked.

 _"Yeah, I guess. I don't know how, I just do. So... how are you?"_

The snake cocked its head. _"Well, I suppose I'm fine. My human keeps me warm and fed. I guess my only complaint is that dark green room she takes me out in, in that one place. It's a bit creepy, and chilly."_

"What'd she say?" Danzia asked impatiently.

"She's fine, mostly. Doesn't like the dark green room you take her out in."

"Dark green room?" Danzia said, thinking.

"The creepy, chilly one."

"Oh! The Slytherin common room! We have a view of the underside of the lake, the light coming through is dark green."

 _"Do you mean the room with the view from beneath water?"_

The snake nodded. _"Yes, that's the one."_

"Looks like you're right. She agreed there's a watery view."

"Wow, this is so cool. I wish I could do that, too."

Harry continued practicing parseltongue with Circe for another hour, before the snake grew tired. But it was long enough for Harry to begin recognizing when he was speaking parseltongue and when he wasn't. He'd even managed to look right at the snake and speak English at it. Of course, Ron was uncomfortable the whole time; he didn't like being reminded that his best friend had what was considered a dark gift.

Despite some friction, though, Harry enjoyed his stay, and was sad when it was drawing to an end. Also excited to be returning to Hogwarts, though, too. The Weasleys, Harry, Hagrid, Luna and her father, and Hermione all met up in Diagon Alley in the last fortnight of August to go school shopping.

Mr. Lovegood was... interesting. Strange like Luna, but more vivacious, unlike his daughter's calm and centered vibe. But his energy seemed to bring the same energy out in Luna, which Harry enjoyed seeing; for even then, something about her made her easy to be around.

The trip first took them to Ollivander's, where Luna got her first wand; everyone else was there, too, getting wand holsters. From there they went to get other equipment, potions supplies, and finally ended up in the bookstore, which was absolutely packed with people, because someone named Gilderoy Lockhart was signing books. Harry couldn't go in there, the noise was too much. He gave some gold to Luna, who had volunteered to get his books for him, and waited outside with Xenophilius, Luna's father, listening to him talk about crumple-horned snorcacks.

When Harry saw Draco Malfoy and his father go into the store, apparently having not noticed him, Harry got a vibe of potential trouble, and went inside, braving the noise. Mr. Lovegood followed him in, and so they both witnessed the elder Malfoy perusing one of Ginny's books just before the fight that broke out between him and Mr. Weasley, until Hagrid appeared and pulled them apart.

"Ere now, ere now," Hagrid said disapprovingly. "Yeh're both grown men! Why can't yeh be more like yer sons, eh? Harry and Draco ent too keen on each other, but at leas they're polite an civil ter one another!"

Harry glanced at Draco, who did indeed look embarassed by his father's actions, and was glancing at Harry as if to gauge his reactions.

The two men gave pseudo-apologies and went their separate ways, just in time for-

"Did someone say Harry Potter?" A blond, handsome man with a face more gleaming teeth than skin came over. "It IS! It IS Harry Potter! Hey you, over here, let's get us both in the picture."

His eyes wide with horror, Harry tried to run for it, but the strange man grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into a photo. The bright lights added to Harry's already growing sensory distress, and he felt a headache coming on. By habit, he tried to grab a headache cure potion, but the man's grip on him didn't let him. So the pain just grew as the man talked. Harry could scarcely make out what he was even saying, something about he was going to be teaching at Hogwarts? That thought made him even sicker.

And so it was that in front of dozens, maybe scores of witnesses, Harry puked all over the front of Gilderoy Lockhart's robes, due to his position at the time.

"Uh-oh!" Lockhart exclaimed. "Poor boy is just so excited to see me he tossed his cookies, poor lad. But no worries, my boy. _Evanesco!_ " he said, causing both the sick and part of his robes to vanish. Seeing this, Harry ran the other way to get away and out the door. Those of his friends who could, followed him.

"Harry?" Luna asked. "Here, drink this, if you think you can keep it down," she said, handing him a bottle of headache cure potion. He took it with shaky hands and nodded, unwilling to risk opening his mouth just yet.

Ron glared toward the bookstore. "Malfoy - the one still in school I mean - was laughing fit to burst. Strange thing, though, I don't think he was laughing at you, not exactly anyway. I heard him say something like 'Did you see the look on that great git's face when Potter got sick all over him?' "

Harry shrugged, but said nothing. His head was still pounding, though, amping up towards more sick; since the only thing worse than the migraine he was having was puking with said migraine, he risked things long enough to down the headache potion. Thankfully, it did its job quickly and, now the pain was gone, it only took him a few more minutes to recover, Mrs. Weasley now fussing over him, taking his temperature with her hand.

Once Harry was feeling better, they went to the Leaky Cauldron, where he got something to eat before they finished up their shopping. Thankfully he was done, though others weren't, giving him time to look in on Quality Quidditch Supplies. Though he had no interest in playing Quidditch, he did remember how flying had felt, and decided it would be prudent to get himself a broomstick. So it was that he returned later with a Nimbus 2000 under his arm.

When it finally came time for them to leave for school, they rushed about making sure they had everything, it all fitting in the Ford Anglia Mr. Weasley owned because of magic expansions he'd done. The fact that they had to keep going back for things, including Ginny's diary, slowed them down considerably. They were almost late to the platform.

Everyone else having gone ahead, only Ron and Harry remained. They ran at the barrier like normal, and BOOM! They smashed right into it, causing chaos as books, clothes, and owl feathers flew everywhere, Hedwig squaking so loudly some people were talking about animal cruelty.

Getting their things together, trying to reassure the Muggles, they finally went off to the side, checking the barrier again a couple times.

"It's stuck, what're we gonna do? The train's leaving in... about 20 seconds!" Ron said, beginning to panic.

"Don't worry," Harry said. "We have options. This is probably Dobby's work, I'll bet anything. We've never had a problem before, have we?"

"Well no. What're you gonna do, though?"

Harry opened his trunk, hoping what he sought wasn't broken, and was delighted to find the two-way mirror intact.

"Luna?" he said at the mirror.

"Harry? Where are you? I saved you a seat."

"We have a bit of a problem. The barrier sealed us out. I suspect Dobby's interference."

"Oh. Well I'll tell the others, then. What are you going to do in the meantime?"

"I have someone I can call for help. She can get Dumbledore or someone to get me."

"Netty?" Luna asked.

"Yes, exactly."

"Well, I wish you luck then, Harry."

He bade her farewell as well, and then put the mirror in his pocket.

"Netty? You can't call a... her here, Harry! Not in front of all these Muggles!"

"I know that. Come, let's find somewhere safe."

After a few minutes of looking, they decided to leave the trunks and things by the car, Ron outside keeping watch. Harry climbed into the boot of the car and, Ron shielding the inside of the boot from view, Harry whispered, "Netty?"

A muffled pop came from the back of the magically expanded boot. "Young sir is calling for Netty?" the house elf asked.

"Yes. The barrier into the station at platform 9 and 3/4th sealed us out. We suspect Dobby."

"Is sir wishing Netty to unseal it?"

"No, it's too late for that now anyway. I was thinking more along the lines of alerting Dumbledore of the problem."

"That is being one possibility, sir. But Netty is having another idea."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Netty is thinking she could be be taking your things to the train, sirs. You could put the things in here, and Netty can get them on the train, then you and your friend could climb in for Netty to take you."

"Okay, I think that will work." Harry climbed out of the boot and the two of them put everything in. A few muffled pops signaled their stuff was in the train. Finally, they were ready. Harry climbed in first, then Ron.

"Netty is thinking, she can have words with Dobby when she is done here, if you would like, sir?"

"Well, if you can catch him, feel free to try."

She nodded. They each took one of her hands, and with a pop they appeared in the train compartment with the others, startling everyone and making Circe's cage almost fall to the floor.

Once Netty was gone, they started explaining what had happened, and their suspicions about who caused it.

"Blimey," Ron said at last. "Can you imagine if Harry didn't know Netty? We might've had to fly the car to school, or something equally barmy."

Harry shook his head. "No, we had Hedwig, too. Granted, Dobby's interfered with her before. But if nothing else, your parents would have returned to the car eventually."

With that little adventure over, Harry and his friends began to focus on enjoying the trip to school.

When they got off the train, Harry hugged Luna farewell before she went with the others on the boats. "See you at the Sorting," Harry whispered before they parted.

Following his older friends, Harry had his first ride in the horseless carriages that took everyone but the first-years up to school, glad that Dobby's foolish plans hadn't gotten him into any trouble. Before long, they were exiting the carriages and walking through the gates and on up toward the school.

As they walked, Harry's eyes turned toward movement, and saw a large tree in the distance swinging some of its branches around like fists, at something unseen.

"What's that?" he asked his older friends, pointing.

"Oh that," Antigone supplied. "That's the Whomping Willow. It punches things that get too near it, so don't go near it if you can avoid it."

"So noted," Harry said.

Harry excitedly watched the Sorting, despite his growing hunger. He was hoping Luna would end up in Griffindor, even if her family had a history of being in Ravenclaw. He barely paid attention to anyone else, even. But he clapped for everyone Sorted, even the Slytherins, which made Snape look at him with suspicion. Still, his example led others to do the same, even if their applause for Slytherin students was less than enthusiastic.

"Lovegood, Luna!" Professor McGonagall called, slipping the hat onto her head.

After a few minutes of deliberation, the hat finally cried out, "Ravenclaw!" Harry clapped, trying to hide his disappointment. A few minutes later, Ginny joined the Griffindor table.

The table filled up with food, and Harry began eating, stopping just long enough at one point to ask Percy if it was allowed to sit at other tables.

"Well," the older Weasley boy said, "it's generally expected to sit with your own House during the welcoming feast and other important feasts, and its considered a very rude faux pas to do otherwise at such times. During the rest of the school year, though, if you wish to join friends from other Houses for meals, it's generally acceptable, as long as you don't do it too frequently. People tend to think you're unfriendly if you avoid your own House too much."

Harry nodded. "Thanks, Percy."

"Not a problem. Always glad to help out where I can."

"Oh Harry," said either Fred or George, "missing your girlfriend already? How sweet."

"You two knock it off," Percy chided.

"Yes, perfect prefect Percy," they said in twin-stereo.

Someone moved, and Harry's gaze turned toward the movement; it was Ginny, moving down the table more. He frowned, wondering what that was all about.

After the feast was over, Dumbledore gave some announcements, which filled them in a little on the new classes, including where Wizard Studies and Muggle Studies were taught at, for those not in the know. Naturally, there was a fair deal of dark muttering from the Slytherin table, at least until Antigone and her friends shushed them.

On his way out the hall, Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall pulled him and Ron aside to discuss the incident with the barrier sealing them off. One of the happy takeaways from this was that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had gotten back to their car just fine; mildly annoyed at the lid of the boot being left wide open, but as nothing had been in there to steal, they were forgiven.

And so Harry went to bed a little smug that Dobby's plans were failing so far, and fell into a relatively peaceful slumber.

-o-


	3. Chapter 3

"Harry Potter and the Trouble With Neurotypicals: Book 2"

By = Fayanora

Note: Fanfiction. Not making money off this. J. K. Rowling gets all the credit for the Potterverse.

Book Two: Aspie Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Chapter 3: Rumors and Scary Voices

The next day they sat down at the Griffindor table and had breakfast, Harry's Slytherin friends popping over for a few minutes to catch up on things that had happened since the last letters they'd gotten from him, but eventually got ushered back to their own table by McGonagall, when it was time to hand out the class schedules. Harry looked at his and saw they had Herbology with the Hufflepuffs first.

While walking over to Herbology, Harry spotted Lockhart, who was their new DADA teacher, and hastily Disillusioned himself so Lockhart wouldn't see him. Once they were safely inside greenhouse 3, and Lockhart was safely away, Harry undid the spell.

"Wow!" said one of the Hufflepuffs. "You're only in second year and you can do a Disillusionment charm?"

"Uh, yes. So can Ron and Hermione. I taught them."

"Cool! How'd you learn it so fast?"

"Actually, an older friend of mine taught me. Antigone Dreyfuss, a Slytherin."

The blond boy scrunched up his face. "You're friends with Slytherins?"

"Well yeah. They're good people, regardless of their house."

"Who are you?" Ron asked the boy, heat in his voice.

"Zacharias Smith. And who are you?"

"Ron Weasley. Anyway, didn't you hear Dumbledore at the end of last year? Antigone, Angela, and Danzia helped us keep the Philosopher's Stone away from You-Know-Who."

This shut the boy up, making him look slightly abashed. He opened his mouth apologetically, but couldn't say anything else because Professor Sprout was talking.

"Good, now I have all your attention, we'll be re-potting mandrakes today. Now, who can tell me the properties of a mandrake?"

Harry's and Hermione's hands were in the air so close to one another that Professor Sprout picked Harry apparently at random.

"Mandrake is a very potent restorative," Harry said. "It's used to do stuff like restoring petrified people to their normal state."

"Excellent; ten points to Griffindor." Hermione looked annoyed at Harry.

"Mandrakes are an essential part of most antidotes. They are dangerous, however. Can anyone tell me why? Yes, Hermione?"

"The cry of the mandrake is fatal to anyone who hears it."

"Precisely. Ten more points to Griffindor. Now the mandrakes we'll be working with today are young, so their cries won't kill you yet, but as they will knock you out for several hours, it's best to take the same precautions.

"Everyone take a pair of earmuffs," she continued, and everyone scrambled to get a pair that weren't pink and fluffy. Neville didn't succeed, and looked very embarrassed. Harry, feeling bad for him, traded with him. Neville got a black pair, and Harry's brown skin contrasted his new pink earmuffs, making several people giggle. Harry didn't notice, though.

"Make sure, when you put them on, that your ears are _completely_ covered. When it's safe to remove them, I will give you a thumbs up."

Professor Sprout put her own earmuffs on, and they all followed suit. Then she rolled up her sleeves, grabbed the plant by its base, and yanked up an ugly, pale green, mottled root-baby, which immediately began screaming and flailing about, struggling the whole time Professor Sprout fought to get it into a newer, larger pot, covering it with dirt. Finally, she gave the thumbs-up, and everyone took their earmuffs off. She began giving other instructions about them, and everyone started getting their things ready to do it themselves.

Since they were doing things four to a pot, it leant them some time for chatter. Another boy, whom Harry recognized but didn't know his name, came up and introduced himself.

"Justin Finch-Fletchley," he said. "I know who you are, of course, the famous Harry Potter. And Hermione Granger, one of the best students of our year." (Hermione smiled as he shook her hand, too.) "And Ron Weasley, right?"

"Er, yeah," Ron said, shaking Justin's hand.

"My name was up for Eton, you know. I can't tell you how glad I am I came here instead. Mom was a little disappointed, of course, but I showed her the two Lockhart books assigned, and she came round to the usefulness of having a wizard in the family."

"Yeah," said Harry. "I think I know how you feel, about being excited to be here. I was raised by Muggles. I didn't know I was a wizard until I got my letter. Hogwarts is _**so**_ much better than where my aunt and uncle were going to send me before I got my letter."

"What?" asked Zacharias Smith. "I heard you were raised in a castle!"

"Nope. I had no idea I was a wizard until shortly before my 11th birthday. Didn't know I was famous, either. And I was very startled to find my parents had left me some gold; I'd never had more than a few pounds at a time before then, and that I had to get by getting jobs behind my aunt and uncle's backs."

"What do you mean by 'pounds'?" asked Zacharias.

"That's what Muggles in Britain use for money," Justin said, showing the other boy a pound coin.

Though all the wizard-borns were fascinated by it, their gawking was cut short by needing to get back to work. It was very difficult work, fighting the dirty little humanoid roots into new pots, and they were all dirty by the end of the class, and had to wash up before going on to their next classes.

For the first time they could remember, the Griffindors were split up for their next class. Ron and other wizard-raised kids went to Muggle Studies, and Harry and Hermione and other Muggle-borns went to Wizard Studies instead.

The classroom that Wizard Studies was in was open when they got there, but empty, so they sat down and began to chat while they were there. The class was a mix of people from all four Houses. There were also first years in the class. A lot of the Griffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws were surprised to see a pair of Slytherins there; Angela Whitechapel and a first-year boy with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail; the boy had striking violet eyes as well. Many were surprised Harry was there, too, but they honed in on the Slytherins instead of him.

"Slytherins, in a Wizard Studies course?" someone asked incredulously.

"Yes, Mr. Thomas," said the calm, soothing voice of Dumbledore, who had suddenly appeared behind the teacher's desk at the front of the room. "And the blood status of these students is to be kept secret; Muggle-borns are not well thought of in Slytherin House, so it is a matter of their safety that nobody outside this room should know."

"Oh. Uh, yes, Professor Dumbledore," Dean said.

"Do I have the word of everyone else here?" Dumbledore asked. Harry finally noticed, as he asked, that the door had been closed.

"Yes, Professor Dumbledore," everyone intoned.

"Good. I will hold you to that. Now, let us start the class today by having everyone introduce one another with your name, and something interesting about yourselves, like a hobby or an interesting birthmark or scar. I shall start. I am Professor Albus Dumbledore, and I have a scar under my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground."

He then picked Dean Thomas to go next, and they went down the rows from there. The Slytherin boy, they found out, was named Willem Stone. Harry made a note to try to add Willem to his list of friends from other Houses.

Then it was Harry's turn. "Well, I'm Harry Potter. I like to read and I don't like loud noises and crowds. Um... that's it." He motioned to the next person that it was their turn.

When they were done, Dumbledore beamed. "Good. Now that we all know one another's names, we may proceed. Welcome to Wizard Studies. This class was founded at the request of several students who felt they were struggling to navigate the rules and regulations of wizarding society's culture, as well as running into obstacles of understanding stemming from not knowing many of the things that wizard-raised children take for granted and don't think to explain to Muggle-borns, such as attitudes about giants, the rules of Quidditch, or facts about house elves."

He walked around the front of the classroom as he spoke, his arms behind his back. "I appointed myself teacher of this class for two reasons. First, I have long experience with the wizarding world, being immensely old as I am. Secondly, I am fond of Muggles, and have educated myself about them to a degree that many wizards and witches have not. While that trait would also make me a good Muggle Studies teacher, we have one of those already, and I feel this knowledge will help me understand what you need to know. But please, if you feel my knowledge has a hole in it, let me know. You're never too old to learn, and even at my age I still feel I do not know nearly as much as I should.

"Also, there are many popular wizarding-world beliefs I disagree with, such as the poor treatment of Muggles, and the prejudice against other magical creatures, even giants. So I will be able to teach you about these beliefs, I hope, in a way which will keep your minds open about whether you agree with them or not. For, just because somebody tells you something does not necessarily make it true. This goes for all things, even your classwork. On the whole, your teachers are right about what they teach, insofar as most magic has worked so well for so long that it barely changes over the centuries; most of our incantations today would be recognizable by ancient Roman wizards and witches. But there is, I wish to stress, always room to grow. There may be better ways of doing things. As Muggle-born or Muggle-raised individuals, hopefully your unique perspective on the wizarding world will help us to grow and change and expand.

"Anyway, my speech is done. Are there any questions?"

There was silence at first, but then Hermione raised her hand.

"Yes, Ms. Granger?"

"I noticed there was no book for this class. Why is that?"

"Ah. Yes, that is because nobody has yet thought to write such a book. Perhaps, after you graduate, Ms. Granger, you could write one."

"So how will this class be structured?" she asked.

"In the weeks since I decided to make this course, I have been working on a syllabus for it. We shall start with a summation of important historical events, in case, uh, in case any of you were not paying attention in History of Magic."

There started a chatter at this, most of it boiling down to "Professor Binns is so dull he could bore a ghost to death," before Dumbledore raised his hands for silence.

"Yes, I am aware of Professor Binns's abysmal record. And the events that made me consider the changes I've already made to classes have made me also ponder removing poor Professor Binns and replacing him. But for now, I shall like us to begin."

After coughing a little to clear his throat, Dumbledore continued. First, he added that his summations of history would include recent history as well, to put the modern wizarding era in a proper context, before moving on to classes about various beliefs, cultural norms, manners, etc.

His summation of the events leading to the statute of secrecy was far more fascinating that the Binns version, and prompted questions from a curious class. They were still discussing it when the bell rang to go to their next class, and so had no homework from it yet. Harry felt sure he was going to enjoy that class very much.

Transfiguration was just as it usually was for Harry. He wasn't quite as good as Hermione, but at least he was better than Ron. He gently suggested to Ron that he spend at least 15 minutes of non-class time practicing so he could get better. Ron kept staring at his old, battered wand though, with a strange look on his face.

"What's wrong?" Harry finally asked.

"This wand is so old, I don't know how much life it's got left. It still works, but, well... I dunno. I've just been feeling, lately, like it's tired. Do wands age like people do?"

"I don't know. That's a question for Mr. Ollivander. Anyway, if you want a new wand, I'd be happy to-"

"No."

"But you didn't even-"

"If I get a new wand, I'll get it myself or get one from Mum and Dad somehow. Anyway, I'm probably imagining it. Just forget I said anything."

Harry didn't say anything else, but it did make him think. He realized that Ron was never able to get his to work as well as most students, and had been among the last to get the levitation charm to work last year; only Neville had done as poorly. In fact, thinking about Neville made Harry think he spotted a pattern. Ollivander said the wand chooses the wizard... Ron's wand was a hand-me-down, and Neville's wand used to be his dad's. He wondered if they were being held back by their wands. It was something to look into more.

The lunch bell rang; class was over. They went down to the Great Hall, where Harry started talking about seeing Luna, ignoring the smirk on Ron's face. When they got there, Ron and he split up, Harry going over to the Ravenclaw table, looking for Luna. He caught her before she sat down, and he invited her over to his table.

She stood there, pondering the question for a minute before deciding. "Well, okay. But I'm going to eat breakfast and possibly dinner at my own table, at least for now. Okay, Harry?"

"Sure thing."

As they left, a bunch of other Ravenclaws stared after them, and began muttering amongst themselves about how the famous Harry Potter was friends with that weird firsty; what was her name? Loony? Loony Lovegood?

These mutterings spread to Hufflepuff and Slytherin tables, too; even Griffindors were looking askance at the two of them sitting there, chatting and laughing; some of them whispered carefully, not wanting to offend the famous Potter boy.

On their way out the hall, they ran into another first-year, a small, mousey-haired, excitable boy holding what looked like an ordinary Muggle camera. When Harry looked at him, he went bright red.

"Hello, Colin," Luna said to him. He blinked at her, waving quietly back, then turned to Harry again.

"Hi Harry! I'm Colin Creevy," he said breathlessly, taking a step forward. "I'm a Griffindor, too. I wanted to know... I mean... could I get a picture?"

Harry's mind worked quickly. It was clear Colin was a Harry Potter fanboy. He had to head this off quickly. "I'd rather not, Colin. No offense, but I have sensory issues, and camera flashes make me ill." This wasn't entirely true; sure, the flash at Flourish and Blotts had been the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back, but he had no reason to think camera flashes would bother him on their own.

"Yeah," Ron said, supporting him. "You should've seen it in Flourish and Blotts, when Lockhart tried getting a photo with him; he puked all over the git's shirt!"

Harry frowned slightly. "Gee thanks, Ron, for telling him that. That's really something I want everyone to know. NOT."

"Oh," Colin said, his face falling. "I just wanted proof I've met you. Everyone's told me how you survived when You-Know-Who tried to kill you, and how he's been gone ever since, and about the scar on your forehead from it" (his eyes raked Harry's hairline) "and a boy in my dormitory said how you can develop pictures in a potion that will make them move!"

Sensing he was going to keep going, Harry interrupted, "Yeah, well, from what Dumbledore told me last year, it wasn't anything I did. It was my mother dying to protect me that did it. She cast powerful magic with that self-sacrifice. And you know what?"

"What?" Colin asked excitedly.

"She was a Muggle-born. A Muggle-born witch's self-sacrifice defeated Vol- er, You-Know-Who."

Colin's eyes went so wide Harry worried they'd pop out, and just said "Wooooowwww..."

"Oy," said Ron. "How come you never told me that?"

Harry shrugged. "It never came up before. Anyway, Colin, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Aside from the sensory issues, I... well, I'm still uncomfortable with being famous. Like I was telling someone earlier today, I was raised by Muggles and didn't know I was famous, or special, or important at all until after I got my letter. Professor McGonagall and Hagrid told me about it all the next day. People keep telling me I'm famous and stuff, and I just don't feel like anything but an ordinary kid. Well, aside from the magic. But otherwise, I'm just Harry."

"Wow, really?"

"Yeah. Imagine if it'd been you instead of me."

Colin stopped talking, lost in thought about going from a regular kid to someone famous overnight. Others in earshot looked thoughtful, too; even, Harry noticed, Draco Malfoy.

"So," Colin said, coming out of his thoughts, "you just want to be treated like a regular kid?"

"Exactly."

Colin nodded. "Will do, Harry. So... wanna be friends?"

"Sure. I like having friends. Never had any before I got my Hogwarts letter. Now, the more the merrier. Just as long as I don't have to deal with too many people at once. Crowds make me ill."

"Is that part of your sensory issues?"

"Right, Colin."

Just then, he saw Lockhart coming, and hastily pulled Colin away in a friendly gesture, attempting to be casual. "So, Colin, how you doing finding your classes? And you too, Luna, come on. I know I had trouble my first week, I can help you find things if you'd like."

"Thanks! That'd be great!"

"You're most kind, Harry," Luna agreed.

"Yeah, and I can show you some of the shortcuts, and places to look out for, and so on..." Harry said, continuing to talk as they got farther from Lockhart, while Ron and Hermione attempted to keep up with him.

Later, on their way to Defense Against the Dark Arts, Harry told Ron and Hermione, "As much as I dislike Lockhart, it's a good thing he came by when he did."

"Why's that?"

"Because that thing I did, showing Colin and Luna the way to their next class, gave me an idea; we upper years should show the first-years around in depth; take them under our wings. Nobody did that for us, and we had so much trouble that first week or two. So I think we should help them."

"That's a great idea, Harry!" Hermione said. "We should tell other people, too. Get it spread around like your other ideas."

"Oh, speaking of that, we need to discuss MAC at a..." he trailed off, and sunk low in his chair as he could, for Lockhart had come in.

Harry didn't know how much more difficult it was to hide behind his books than it might have been, for he hadn't known that Lockhart had tried to get his entire collection on the book list. As it was, he'd only managed to get _Voyages With Vampires_ and _Holidays With Hags_ on the book list, having picked two at random when he'd been informed he couldn't have more than that.

The class with Lockhart was... interesting; but not for good reasons. After giving them a quiz on how well they'd read the two assigned books, he released a bunch of Cornish pixies into the room, tried to do a spell on them that did nothing, got his wand chucked out the window, and caused utter bedlam. It was only thanks to Hermione and Harry stunning them out of the air one at a time that order was finally restored. By then, Lockhart was long gone and the bell was ringing.

As they left, Ron and Harry complained loudly about how inept Lockhart was, and Hermione defended him.

"Listen, Hermione," Harry said, becoming irritated by her defense of the buffoon, "just because someone writes something in a book doesn't mean it's true, even if it's labeled non-fiction. Publishers exist to sell books, and they don't always care if what they're printing is truth or tripe."

"But he's a _teacher!_ " she shot back, as though this made him a god.

"Teachers are just humans, like anyone else. Dumbledore told me even _he_ makes mistakes; he admitted that sending me to the Dursleys was a mistake."

She looked unsure of her position, but still like she wanted to believe.

"Anyway," Ron added, "the position's cursed. We've known it for years; everyone says so. New DADA teacher every year for years, after all. And the last one actually _died_. There probably wasn't anyone else who _wanted_ the job. And if the position's cursed, even certain other teachers might not be so keen on it now," he said, referring to Snape's desire to teach DADA.

"Well... I don't know," she admitted. "Those _are_ good points."

"Trust me, Hermione. I read a lot of tripe in Muggle libraries too. It's a universal fact of life that you can't always believe what you read. If everything written in books claiming to be true were actually true, then the world would literally be like ten thousand years old, the planet would be flat and sitting on the back of a turtle or something like that, or other such rubbish that science has since disproved. And the fact he couldn't even handle pixies on his own is a scientific observation that makes me think he's rubbish and a liar."

She frowned, her worldview shattered. "Okay, okay, you convinced me. It's just... well, he's just so _handsome_."

The boys rolled their eyes.

It was lucky Harry had his new idea of helping out first-years to help him avoid Lockhart, because the git seemed intent on cornering him to chat him up. Probably knew, subconsciously, that Harry was more famous than him and wanted to smarm up to him, but Harry was having none of that.

When the weekend came, Harry and his friends in MAC gathered for their first meeting of the year, to discuss how they would do things this year. They'd already gotten permission to advertise on the House bulletin boards, so Angela - who was good at art - helped in that regard. Luna was there too, and she was at least as good as Angela in art, so they worked together. Harry was glad to see that Luna shared his enthusiasm for open-mindedness towards Slytherins, and got along quite well with Angela and the other Slytherins. Heck, she got along with them better than she did with almost anyone else in school, excepting himself, probably because they, too, knew what it was like to be outcasts.

Things had not been great for them, he found out, before last year's end of year speech by Dumbledore, and now the three Slytherins were having an even harder time of it this year than before, since they'd been known to have helped Harry. About their only saving grace, it seemed, had been the unexpected support of Draco Malfoy, who seemed to be taking his pro-Potter stance more seriously.

"That reminds me," Antigone said, "Draco wanted me to give you a message. He... how did he put it? Ah yes, he 'extends his hand in friendship, not mere civility.' He admits you and he may still have ideological differences, but he's interested in trying to overcome those. Apparently, he had ideas about you very similar to some of the others' ideas about you, like living in a castle and other rubbish."

"Well that's promising," Harry said. "I don't know how much I trust him and his two bodyguards, but I'm glad to hear this. If you see him, tell him I'll meet him in the library tomorrow after lunch, if he's free."

"Okay, will do."

While Angela and Luna were designing the MAC advertisements, Harry and Hermione discussed the syllabus for the club, aided by the fact that both of them had brought a bunch of Muggle books on various subjects with them, having bought them over the summer. This process was _also_ aided by Ron, whom they looked to for his input as a wizard.

Just before they left, Ron promised to send an owl to his dad, asking for _his_ input as well, since Mr. Weasley was fascinated by Muggles.

"There's no more time now," Harry said, "as it's almost dinnertime, but we need to work on other ways to spread interest. One idea I had was seeing if I could give a speech on the subject of Muggle academia to the Muggle Studies class. I figure, with my fame - as weird as that still is to me - they'd be more likely to listen to me."

"Good thinking, Harry. Do you want help writing it?"

"Sure, sounds good to me."

He wasn't looking forward to speaking in front of a class, but as long as it was just a class at a time, and as long as everyone was largely quiet, he felt he could do it.

The next day, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Luna went to Hagrid's after breakfast. It was the perfect excuse to avoid his cooking, after all. Luna, being polite, took a rock cake, and politely refused another after nearly breaking a tooth on it.

A little harder to do was refuse Hagrid's lunch offer, but they managed it without hurting his feelings and ate in the Great Hall as usual. Luna was still eating lunch with Harry every day and other meals with her own table, so they got to talk at lunch some before Harry's meeting with Malfoy.

Harry really wasn't sure what to expect at this meeting with Malfoy, and so just in case, he took his two-way mirror with him so he could call Luna and the others if need be. And so, screwing up his nerve, he went into the library.

Draco was sitting at a table in the back, alone and reading a book about Quidditch. When Harry came up to him, he looked up, put the book aside, and stood up, holding out his hand.

"Harry Potter," Draco said, his voice devoid of any bad attitude, "I apologize for my attitude and comments on the train last year. Such behavior is unbecoming of a Malfoy."

"Apology accepted," Harry said, shaking his hand. Having done this, Harry cast some privacy charms and the two sat down.

"Wow," Draco said with greed in his voice, "those charms are quite advanced for us second years. Can you teach me those?"

"Yeah, I can do that sometime. Not right now, of course."

Draco put his face and posture back to prim and proper. "Yes, of course, completely understandable. Naturally, you want to know why I asked to meet you."

"Antigone said something about a new overture of friendship?"

"Well, sort of. I understand we still have ideological differences, so maybe an acquaintanceship would work for now, maybe work our way up to friendship?"

Harry scratched his chin, thinking. "I can do that, on one condition."

Draco looked wary, but hopeful. "And what might that be?"

"You attend at least one meeting of our Muggle Academia Club. And actually pay attention and contribute to the conversation in a non-hateful way."

The blond boy's face momentarily contorted in disgust, but then changed to 'pensive,' before he got it back to a stoic mask. He did not immediately respond, and also scratched his chin.

"May I ask why you're asking this condition?" Draco asked, his annoyance barely masked.

"It's simple. You've been taught certain things about Muggles by your parents; parents who have likely never gotten to know anything about Muggles first-hand. I know you're being required to take Muggle Studies, but since even my friend Ron gained a newfound respect for Muggles after some of our discussions about Muggle science and academics, I decided this would be an excellent opportunity to expose you to the same information; it might help you expand your point of view on Muggles."

The other boy's face went from flabbergasted and annoyed to pensive. Then a sly grin split his face and he chuckled. "Potter," he said jovially, "you would make an excellent Slytherin."

Harry smiled. "Does that mean you accept?"

Draco held out his hand. "You have a deal, Potter." They shook hands. "So when is the next meeting of this... this club of yours?"

Getting out his notebook to check, Harry soon said, "We have one scheduled for Tuesday after dinner. Meet me at the library, and I'll guide you to the classroom we use for it from there."

"Tuesday after dinner," Draco said, writing it down in his own notebook. "Got it. I'll be there."

"So, in the meantime, did you want to talk about anything else?"

"Well," he said, looking a little embarrassed. "I _am_ curious to hear the real story of what happened with Quirrell last year."

Harry nodded, smiling. "Okay then," he said, and launched into the tale from the very beginning.

Between MAC and Malfoy, Harry was having a great weekend. He spent so long speaking with Malfoy that it was almost curfew when they stopped, hurrying back to their dormitories without running.

As they walked out of the library, he heard a voice to chill the marrow.

 _"Come... come to me... Let me rip you... Let me tear you... Let me kill you..."_

Harry jumped, looking around for the source of the voice.

"You okay, Potter?" Draco asked him. "You look like you've seen a monster."

"Did you hear something?" Harry asked, testing a theory without giving too much away.

"Hear what, Potter? There's nobody here but us. Are you going to be okay? I don't fancy telling any of the Professors I'm out after curfew because I had to walk you back to your dorm."

Harry forced his emotions under control. "No, sorry. Just... sudden noises make me jumpy, and I thought I heard something. I'll be fine."

Draco didn't look so sure, but after a pause, he shrugged and walked away. Harry watched him go. When he was out of sight, Harry ran for it, not caring if he got in trouble. He had to get away from that voice.

When he got into the common room, he went over to Hermione and Ron.

"Hi Har- Harry, why are you out of breath? You been running, mate?"

Harry gestured for silence, then got out his wand and put up privacy wards around the three of them before sitting down. Even then, he had to catch his breath before he could say more than a few words. But finally, he explained what he'd heard.

"A voice only you could hear?" Ron said, looking at him like he was crazy. "Even in the wizarding world, mate, that's-"

"I thought you might say that. But I recognized it. I'd been practicing with Circe so much that I recognized it. It was parseltongue."

"Parseltongue? So you heard a snake?" Hermione asked. "Did you see any snakes in the area?"

"No, I didn't. So I've no idea where it might've been hiding, and I really wasn't keen on finding out. I got out of there as soon as I could."

"Well if it was a snake, it was probably just talking about..." Ron lowered his voice because Scabbers was in the room, "rats or mice or something. Y'know, cuz snakes eat them?"

"Maybe. But I've spoken with snakes before, and they sounded normal. This sounded... deeply evil. And big, and dangerous. I got the impression it was talking about killing humans."

"Harry," Hermione said in a pacifying tone, "snakes don't kill humans unless they feel threatened. Snakes aren't evil."

"I don't know if I believe that. Magic makes all kinds of thing possible. Couldn't magic make a snake smart enough to be evil? Maybe there's some kind of magical snake monster?"

"Harry, I know the voice must have been terrifying, but I've never heard of a magical snake creature that could be a threat to humans. I think you're overreacting."

"Yeah, mate. I haven't heard of anything like that either, and my brother Charlie was in Care of Magical Creatures, and he talked about his classes in his letters and over the summer all the time."

Harry put his head in his hands, letting the darkness calm him. Finally, when he came back up, he spoke.

"You're probably right. Given how big, drafty, and old this castle is, I guess I shouldn't be surprised I'm hearing snakes around. I've always wondered why there were so few mice and rats in a place like this, not counting pets."

"Well, lots of people bring cats, too. Toads are out of fashion, so that leaves rats, cats, and owls allowed for pets in school. And with Mrs. Norris hanging around, I doubt many people with rats let theirs run around loose."

The rest of the night Harry spent trying to forget the scary voice, but wasn't having great luck. It didn't surprise him that he had nightmares about a great venomous snake that night.

Note: I've had time to think about it, and I've decided that, given his attitude when forced into being a Death Eater, I believe most of Draco's racist behavior in the books was due to essentially hurt feelings when Harry rejected him. Oh sure, he was actually racist against Muggles at the start, but I believe he was largely just parroting his father; Harry rejecting him so completely and publicly just cemented Draco into his beliefs. Like, "Potter acted exactly as rude as father always said blood traitors do, thus father must be right." Whereas in this AU, Harry's response and Draco's subsequent response made him more open minded. He's still a spoiled rich kid, and will have lots of privilege to become aware of and hopefully attempt to take into account for in dealings with other people, but yeah, still open minded as regards blood traitors at the very least.

Note 2: Given that basilisks can only be made by hatching a chicken egg under a toad, can be killed by a rooster's crow, how they're basically the snake version of Voldemort, and they can only be controlled by a parselmouth, I figure they're rare enough that Hermione only found out about them in the canon books by looking through really obscure books about even more obscure monsters. So knowing it's a snake monster isn't going to help them much.


	4. Chapter 4

Harry Potter and the Trouble With Neurotypicals: Book Two.

Or, "Aspie Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

Chapter 4: Halloween

"You did WHAT?" Ron exploded in the MAC classroom Monday afternoon. Harry had called an emergency meeting to inform them of what he'd forgotten in the midst of the scary voice the night before. "No way, that racist git? No bloody-"

"I think it's brilliant," Antigone said. "If Malfoy had any idea the kinds of things Muggle science has come up with, he'd never believe anyone calling Muggles stupid animals ever again!"

Ron opened his mouth and spluttered at her like a fish out of water, but then closed his mouth and admitted defeat by sulking.

"Yeah, Antigone, that was my thought as well. Anyway, we need to work on what to talk about in tomorrow's meeting."

The next day, after classes, Draco met Harry at the library and Harry led him to the MAC classroom. It didn't look so good to start with, as Draco sighed a lot and rolled his eyes at first. However, after several minutes of discussing Muggle science, the blond boy's expression began to change subtly, and after another few minutes, he sat up and began listening in earnest. Harry had to stop himself doing a happy dance when Draco actually started asking salient questions, questions that didn't sound forced. It was clear that Draco had gone into this meeting expecting it to be really horrible, but by the time the curfew was drawing near, it was difficult to tear him away. His attitude appeared to have completely changed. And as Harry had noticed Draco wasn't a very good liar (he tended to wear his heart on his sleeve), Harry believed it. Even Ron had to admit, later, that Draco seemed changed by the experience.

During the rest of that week, Draco kept finding Harry in the halls or at the meal tables, asking him in cautious words when the next MAC meeting was. They had a new member, an unexpected one at that.

The next week and a half boded well for MAC in general; the advertisements in the different Houses were bringing in a few new people, but it was Harry's speeches to the Muggle Studies classes that started bringing in even more people. Soon, MAC had Neville, Seamus Finnegan, Dean Thomas and Justin Finch-Fletchley (who missed Muggle classes), and many others would come into meetings as their schedules allowed. So it was that by the time October came around, MAC was one of the most popular extracurricular clubs in the school.

Harry noticed that Ginny had joined them, too. She looked ill, he noted. The weather was bad, cold and rainy, so a lot of people were coming down with colds; he wondered if she was, too.

On one of the weekend days when it wasn't raining, but had been, Harry decided to cure his cabin fever by taking his broom out and flying around the grounds. He mounted his Nimbus on the paved part of the path right in front of the steps, and flew off in a random direction. He looped the castle a few times, even the highest towers, then flew out over the black lake a little bit, but moved back to being over the ground before long, as he didn't fancy falling into the lake when he couldn't swim.

Not that it was safer to fly so high above the ground, of course, when there was nobody around to save him if he fell. But as long as he kept his consciousness, he felt he could summon his broom mid-fall or cast a feather-light charm on himself before he landed.

For hours he flew all around the grounds, even out over the Forbidden Forest and back. Then the weather changed suddenly, the rain returning. Harry aimed for the pavement, but ended up touching down in mud instead, having misjudged the spacing.

"Oh bloody hell," Harry said, his shoes and robes muddy. He knew the vanishing spell, of course, but he wasn't sure enough of his skills with it yet to risk vanishing the mud off his clothes. He might pull a Lockhart and vanish part of his clothes, or even part of his body. So he made muddy footprints along the path. He tried a cleaning spell, but cast it so badly it made the problem worse. Then he tried Vanishing the mud, and to his horror Vanished a hole in the stone.

"Ffff-" he started, holding himself back in case anyone heard. "Fudge." He had no idea how to fix that, so he just stopped trying and walked back into the castle.

When he walked in, he found the Griffindor ghost, Sir Nicolas. The ghost seemed to be in a bad mood, and had a letter in his hand. He and Harry spoke, and Harry found out that Nicolas had been denied a part of something called the Headless Hunt, and was very sore about it.

Then Mrs. Norris appeared, and ran off to tattle on him to Filch, however that worked. Harry tried getting out of there as fast as he could, but was too late; Filch, who had the flu, got mad at him and dragged Harry to his office.

While there, Harry tried to talk the man down. "Sir, if you're ill, shouldn't you be in the hospital wing? Why are you working when you're-"

"Well this castle isn't going to clean itself, boy! I can't afford to stop working, and you've just made my job a lot worse."

"Why not find one of the Professors, and ask them to Vanish the mud? I'd do it myself, but I don't have enough control of it yet."

"You know you little worms aren't allowed to do magic in the corridors!"

"Surely you'd make an exception for people cleaning up after themselves?"

"No, boy! Rules are rules. Now let's see, punishment, punishment..."

SLAM! came a noise from above.

"PEEVES!" Filch went off to find out what Peeves had done this time, leaving Harry in the office. Harry, not wanting his punishment to be any worse, just sat there, waiting. His gaze wandered around the room, and he spotted a purple envelope with silver lettering on the outside. He stood up and cocked his head to read it. It was for something called Kwikspell.

Curiosity warred with common sense, and despite images of Filch whipping him invading his mind, common sense lost the battle. Harry read the letter, figuring out from it that Filch wasn't a wizard, but was non-magic. It explained a lot, like his hatred of students, but raised many other questions, like _Why do they have a non-magic person cleaning the school, when a witch or wizard could do it faster with a wand? And for that matter, why not have a house elf do it? They'd be_ _ **glad**_ _to do it._

A noise got Harry's attention; Filch was coming back. He hastily put the letter back in the envelope and tried to put it back where it was. He managed to sit down just in time for Filch to come in complaining. Surreptitiously, Harry eyed the Kwikspell letter. It wasn't where it had been. But maybe he wouldn't notice?

Filch did notice, though, and turned white. Harry denied having read the letter when asked. Filch hemmed and hawed about it, tried to pretend it was for a friend; but finally - to Harry's astonishment - Filch let Harry go, on the promise he was to tell nobody. Harry swore he wouldn't. Filch didn't seem entirely satisfied, but let him go anyway.

Harry kept his promise to Filch; that was the kind of person he was. He even contemplated sending an apology letter to the man, but decided against it, as it might further anger him.

While it _had_ been Peeves that broke the vanishing cabinet that got Filch out of there, Nicolas had put him up to it, probably feeling like his conversation had kept Harry from getting to safety in time. Very thankful for this, Harry had somehow gotten guilt-tripped into doing a favor for Nicolas in turn... he would be going to Nicolas's Death-Day party.

When he'd told his friends about it, Hermione and Luna had been fascinated. Ron thought it was weird to celebrate the day you died. His Slytherin friends had mixed reactions as well.

On Halloween, he was regretting his promise, but he went anyway. Ron, Hermione, and Luna went with him. Because it was a party, Luna wore a dress: neon blue with bright red polka dots. Harry wasn't the only one to get woozy looking directly at it, as the red polka dots wobbled around on the blue background.

The party itself was exactly as Ron had predicted: depressing. As they came in, Hermione pulled them all to one side. "I don't want to talk to Moaning Myrtle," she explained.

"Who?" asked Harry.

"She haunts a toilet in the girl's lavatory on the first floor," Hermione and Luna said in near synch.

"She haunts a _toilet_?" Ron said incredulously.

"Yes," said Hermione. "It's been out of order all year because she keeps flooding the place. I never went there anyway if I could avoid it, it's awful having to pee with her wailing at you."

"Look, food!" interrupted Ron.

It was food, yes, but rotten food, moldy food. Nobody had predicted that there'd be nothing here for them to eat. They supposed the food was let to spoil to give it a stronger flavor for the ghosts. Even so, they could only "almost" taste it.

"Well this won't do," Harry said. "Netty?"

The house elf appeared before them almost at once, her eyes growing wide at all the ghosts, and shivering a little in the cold.

"S-sir c-called N-Netty?"

"Yes. As you can see, this death day party has no food we can eat. I was wondering if you could get us some food from the kitchen? We'd go to the feast, but it would be rude to break a promise."

"M-Mister P-Potter is always s-so k-kind and c-considerate. N-Netty will be m-most glad to help." And without another word, she popped away.

Hermione looked at Harry. "So that's Netty?"

"Yes."

"House elves look kinda weird, don't they?" asked Ron. "Cute, though."

"I like her. I wish I'd gotten to introduce myself properly," Luna said.

"Your dress prob'ly scared her off. Between it and the spoiled food..."

"Ron," Harry said warningly.

Ron's ears went red. "Sorry. I'm hungry, and it's not helping my mood."

Hermione decided to change the subject. "I saw she had a Hogwarts crest on her... on her toga. She works for the school?"

"Yes. There's lots of house elves that work here. I think Netty said once that there are over 100."

"Over 100? How come we never see them?"

"They work in the kitchens by day, only come out to clean at night. Heh, kinda like those old fairy tales, in fact. I wonder if they're where those stories came from?"

Hermione looked affronted. "Do they at least get paid?"

"No. They seem to loathe the idea of getting paid."

Her eyes went wide. "You mean Hogwarts is using over 100 _slaves_?"

"Well, that's what I thought at first, too. But Netty explained that it's more like a mutually beneficial relationship, or at least it's supposed to be that way. There are exceptions, like Dobby, but on the whole, it's safer for them to work as servants to wizards than it is to fend for themselves in the wild."

"Well that doesn't mean they can't get paid."

"They don't value the same things we do. They don't value gold, or vacations. They value other things. If you want to do the equivalent of paying a house elf, Netty says to praise them for their work, appreciate them, treat them with kindness and compassion, and generally just be good to them. And uh, don't talk about wages or vacations or sick leave around them. They get very offended when others disrespect their values."

As Hermione digested that, Netty returned with two other house elves, who left several platters of food for them on a small table they'd brought along for the purpose. Ron and Harry praised them highly for their service, and even Hermione did so, though she was still pondering his words. Harry noticed her pull Netty aside and have a conversation with the elf, probably to confirm what he'd said. Luna drifted off to talk with one of the ghostly nuns, a sandwich in one hand and a glass of pumpkin juice in another.

Harry was eating some roast beef when Nicolas came over. "Ah, good thinking, Harry, good thinking. I can't believe I forgot to mention the lack of edible food here. My apologies, dear boy." Then he spotted something, and his whole mannerism changed. "Oh, pardon me, I er, I saw a friend of mine across the room. See you soon, Harry!" He floated away as fast as he could manage, almost at a run.

Ron looked curiously back at the ghost, too, but they didn't wonder about his motives for long. Peeves had drifted over, cackling. "Nibbles?" he asked, holding up some moldy peanuts.

"No thanks, Peeves. We've got some food."

Hermione came back, and Peeves grinned maliciously at her. "Heard you talking about poor Myrtle earlier. _Rude_ you was to her, in fact." He then bellowed, "Oi! Myrtle!"

Hermione frantically tried to get him to stop, but it was too late. Myrtle came floating over, looking glum and morose as usual. The resulting conversation did not go well, despite Hermione's every attempt, because Peeves kept saying rude things, and soon Myrtle was running off in a tantrum.

The rest of the night went a little better. The headless hunt ghosts arrived, making a spectacle and embarrassing poor Nick at his own party. Harry, without prompting, told the leader how terrifying he thought Nick was, but they were unconvinced.

Between the chill of the dungeons and the way the party was going, they ended up leaving early, taking as much food with them as they could hold, leaving the rest to the house elves. Luna seemed reluctant to leave, but went with them anyway.

They were on their way to the entrance hall to see if they could join the feast in time for puddings, when Harry heard the horrifying voice again.

 _"... rip... tear... kill..."_

He froze, grabbing the stone wall, looking around desperately for the source of the voice.

"Harry, what're you-"

"It's that voice again! Quiet, I'm trying to hear!"

 _"Soo hungry... for sooo long..."_

"It'll sound like hissing to you. Any idea where it's coming from?"

 _"Kill... Time to kill..."_

It was growing fainter, moving upward. He followed it, the others lagging behind.

"Harry, we don't hear anything," Hermione said.

 _"I smell blood... I SMELL BLOOD..."_

"It's going to kill someone!" Ignoring them all, he ran up the stairs, and only stopped when confronted with a huge puddle of water. On the walls, written in what looked like blood, it said:

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.

Even worse, Filch's cat, Mrs. Norris, was hanging from a sconce by her tail.

"Oh shite," Harry said. "We need to get out of here."

It was too late, though. The feast had ended, and everyone was coming up this way to get to their dormitories. Everyone was talking amongst themselves, until they saw the scene before them and it all went dead.

"What's all this? What's all this now?" As if the situation couldn't get worse, that was Filch coming up to see what all the hubbub was about. Naturally, he had a freakout when he saw his cat petrified.

Filch was in the middle of putting the blame on Harry when the teachers arrived. Dumbledore and some of the other senior teachers were studying Mrs. Norris, while Lockhart made Filch cry by talking about what he thought killed her.

"She is not dead, Argus," Dumbledore said. "She has been petrified. But how, I cannot say."

"Ask him!" Filch said, pointing at Harry.

"Not even a second year of Harry's skill could have done this, Argus. I doubt if even a sixth year could. This is very, very dark magic indeed."

"He did it! I know he did! He saw my Kw-"

"I kept your secret, Mister Filch. Are you going to reveal it just to put the blame on me?" He began rubbing his head. "I didn't hurt your cat. I don't hurt animals; it's against my nature, especially having been hurt before myself..." he trailed off.

Changing tack, Filch leaned over to Dumbledore's ear. Harry was close enough he could just barely make out the word "Squib."

"If he's telling you what I suspect he's telling you, Professor Dumbledore, I don't care. I'm not a bigot. And I've never heard of this Chamber of Secrets before."

"Argus, Harry could not have done it. He says he did not do it, and I believe him, even if he _could_ have done it somehow."

"If I might speak, Headmaster," Snape said, which could not possibly be good. "Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it is rather suspicious, the circumstances. What were you four doing so far from the rest of the students?"

"We were at a death-day party for Sir Nicolas," Harry said. "There were hundreds of ghosts there, they can all testify to us being there."

"Yes," Luna agreed dreamily. "And that lovely house elf, Netty, was there as well."

"A death day party? Really? I did not know they served food fit for human beings at such places."

"They don't. Netty was there because I called her to bring us some food, when I saw there wasn't any there. I didn't want to be rude to poor Nicolas, by leaving."

"How considerate of you," Snape said, sneering. "But that still doesn't explain why you were up here ahead of everyone else."

"It got too chilly for us in the dungeons, so we started coming back. Since we already had food, we decided to go back to our common room."

"Enough, Severus; I have already said Harry could not have done it."

"My cat has been petrified. I want to see some _punishment!"_

"We will be able to cure her, Argus. Professor Sprout has a wonderful crop of mandrakes even now. When they are done maturing, we will be able to make a restorative draught for Mrs. Norris, and she will be fine once more. Anyway, you four may go now."

Harry was tempted to ask his friends what a squib was, but as he had managed to keep Filch's secret despite Filch's own mistaken judgments, he didn't want to break his word now. Not when his friends would demand he explain. He decided to ask Dumbledore later, after Wizard Studies class, what it meant.

The school could talk of nothing but the Chamber of Secrets for the next few days, especially since Filch kept trying to scrub the words off the wall, to no avail, snapping at any student that happened by.

Ginny still looked ill, and to top it off, she was extremely disturbed by Mrs. Norris's fate. Fred and George didn't help matters, talking ill of the feline around her, until Percy snapped at them to stop.

Considering the situation they'd been found in, nobody who'd been attending MAC seemed to think Harry had anything to do with the situation, no matter what Filch said. And only some of the Slytherins seemed to believe it, or at least they teased Harry about it. But most of the school knew, either by being part of MAC or knowing someone who was, that Harry wasn't the type to attack people.

One day in History of Magic, Hermione actually interrupted Professor Binns and convinced him to tell them the tale of the Chamber of Secrets, of how Salazar Slytherin - who believed only wizard-born students should be admitted to Hogwarts - had a falling out with the others and supposedly made the Chamber of Secrets, in which he had hidden a monster. He made clear, however, that he considered the whole story errant nonsense.

"Obviously, wherever the Chamber is, if the monster's a magical snake of some sort," Harry said later under privacy wards, "then it stands to reason that the entrance is password-protected, and the password is something in parseltongue."

"Yeah, but we still don't know where it is," Ron said. "And all we know for sure is you heard parseltongue just before we found Mrs. Norris. Might be a coincidence."

"Maybe, but I doubt it."

"Well," said Hermione, "I've been reading in the library on magical creatures. It's amazing how many books there are about them. I haven't found anything yet. Whatever it is, it's either very obscure and rare, or something lost to history."

"Or you just haven't found the right book yet," Ron pointed out.

She shrugged. "I suppose. Well, I guess I'll just have to keep trying."

"I wonder if Draco knows anything about it."

Ron snorted. "Way he was raised, Harry, he might _be_ the Heir of Slytherin for all we know. He could just be smarming up to you, pretending to play along with MAC meetings, to get close to you."

"That's a possibility. I doubt it's true, but it could be. And even if it isn't, I don't know how he'd react to knowing I'm a parseltongue. I can't tell him. Nobody but the core - you, Hermione, Luna, Angela, Antigone, and Danzia - can know."

"Percy knows too, remember? Of course, that was over a year ago, he might've forgotten. He's a self-centered git, so he probably forgot about it by the following morning, as it didn't really affect him."

"Does Dumbledore know?"

Harry shook his head. "I haven't told him. He's such a good wizard, he might think less of me for knowing."

"I doubt it, Harry. Dumbledore doesn't strike me as the type to let one fact like that change his whole point of view on somebody. You should tell him."

"Yeah, okay," Harry said, while secretly thinking there was no way in Hell he was going to take that risk.

A couple days later, while walking in the corridors, they happened upon the scene of the crime. Nobody was around for once, so they went in looking for clues. When they got in, Harry was surprised to find that it was Myrtle's lavatory.

"Oh, hi Myrtle. How're you?" Hermione asked.

Myrtle, who was floating over one of the toilet tanks, frowned over at them. "This is a _girl's_ toilet, and _they're_ not girls."

"We wanted to look around," Harry said. "And I wanted to ask you if you saw anything, on Halloween night."

"I don't know, I wasn't paying attention. Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to drown myself. Then of course, I remembered that I... that I'm..."

"Already dead?" supplied Ron. Harry glared at him. He was an aspie, and even he had more tact that that.

Myrtle understandably began crying again, and dived into the toilet, splashing them with water. Harry shuddered.

"Honestly, that was almost cheerful for her. But Ron, you need to learn some tact."

"What? I was just trying to help."

"You know, Hermione, sometimes I wonder if Ron's an aspie, too?"

"God, I hope not. Though it would explain a few things. After all, not all aspies are brainy; some are downright dumb. Just like anyone else, they come in all kinds."

"Hello, standing right _here_!" Ron shouted. This was a mistake, as it got the attention of Percy, who saw them come out of Myrtle's bathroom, and began giving them the third degree about it.

When they finally got away, they started talking again, this time about suspects. Ron brought up Draco Malfoy as a suspect.

"Ron, he's been going to MAC meetings. I doubt he's the heir."

"Yes," Harry said. "I doubt it too, but Ron did have a point the other day, Draco _could_ be lying. I just wish there was some way to be sure..."

"Well, we could all sneak down to their common room while Disillusioned," Ron suggested. "Danzia or one of the others could let us in, on some pre-arranged signal, and we could listen in on Malfoy's conversations."

"That's a good plan, but I don't think it's quite good enough. We need some way of goading the information out of him, and we can't do that if we're invisible. We'd have to pretend to be friends of his, Slytherin friends. Like Crabbe and Goyle."

"And how do you propose we do that? We haven't done human transfiguration yet," Ron pointed out.

"We don't need to. There's something called Polyjuice Potion, Snape's mentioned it in class before; it lets us change into other people."

Harry stared at Hermione. "That sounds like a potion just _begging_ to be abused in so many ways I don't even want to think about."

"Yes, well it _is_ illegal to use it without Ministry approval. And we'd be breaking so many school rules, too."

"We've been a bad influence on you Hermione," Ron said. "Anyway, how do we make it? Potion that illegal, I doubt they have the recipe in school."

"Oh, but they do. It's in the restricted section. I know the book to get; _Moste Potente Potions_."

"But we'd need a teacher's permission to get it out. Remember when Harry tried sneaking in there at night? It didn't go so well. And any teacher we asked would want to know what it was for, unless they were a total idiot."

There was silence at these words, as they all knew what that meant.

"No," said Harry. "I'm not smarming up to that buffoon just for this. Listen, Dumbledore taught us in Wizard Studies class the other day how to owl-order stuff without sending gold in the mail, if we have Gringotts accounts. I can owl-order the book, and then later any ingredients we don't have access to. But I am _not_ going to get any closer to Lockhart than I need to."

"Oh fine, be that way. Just make sure to have them send it fast, we can't afford to waste any time."

"I'll make out and send the form tonight, if that helps."

She nodded.

True to his word, Harry owl-ordered the book from Flourish & Blotts, with instructions to get the gold for it from his Gringotts account, as Dumbledore had shown them. The very next day, in the afternoon, an owl came in and dropped a package on the table in front of him, then took off again. Taking the package, unopened, to the MAC classroom, putting up privacy wards, they opened it up and Hermione read the instructions for the Polyjuice Potion.

"This is the most fiddly and complicated potion I've ever _seen_. Harry, you'll have to order a couple things. Boomslang skin and powdered horn of a bicorn look to be the only things on here we can't get from the store cupboards."

"Good. I'll put another order in tonight. Just write down how much we'll need..."

"That's good, Harry. Wow, this potion is difficult. If I'm understanding these directions right, it'll take a whole month to brew."

"A month! But if Malfoy is the Heir, he could attack half the muggleborns in the school by then."

"Yes, but it's the only plan we've got right now. Until we think of something better, we have to go with it."

Later, Harry filled Antigone, Luna, Angela, and Danzia in on what they were doing, Ron glaring at him the whole time, and asked the three Slytherin girls where the Slytherin common room was. Antigone told him, but...

"If this potion takes a month," Luna said in her dreamy voice, "then to use it, you'll have to stay here at Hogwarts over the Christmas break."

"That won't be a problem," Ron said. "My parents are going to visit Bill in Egypt this Christmas, so Harry and I will have to stay anyway."

"Oh. Well I'm sure my daddy would be thrilled to have you over, Harry."

Harry's face suddenly turned inexplicably hot at the thought of spending the Christmas in Luna's house. "Er, uh... well, I'd love that, but well, as you say, if it takes a month to brew... well..."

Luna sighed wistfully. "That's okay, Harry. I _did_ want to show you my bedroom, but I guess that can wait til the summer."

His face grew even hotter at this, and for a time, he lost his ability to speak. Instead, he opened his mouth and made a strange sound, like a cross between a moan and the sound of a sick cow.

On Saturday, Harry woke up earlier than usual, but felt awake almost instantly, so he went down to get some breakfast, grabbing his Nimbus before he did. He knew, vaguely, that today was the Quidditch match between Griffindor and Slytherin, but as he wasn't on the team, and the only match he'd ever gone to made him literally sick from fear for his classmates, he decided to go flying around the grounds for a change, vowing to be much more wary of mud when he landed this time.

The first few hours of this were without incident. After a couple hours of flying high and fast, he switched to hovering low and slow in circles around the lake, staring out over the water, wondering what was beneath the lake's surface, other than the giant squid.

He was still looking out over the water when his eye caught movement. Something was flying in the air toward him. He sat up at attention on his broom, ready to fly away at a moment's notice, still trying to figure out what the darned thing _was_. Finally, he saw it well enough to recognize it from an old memory; it was one of the Quidditch balls; a bludger, if he wasn't mistaken.

Knowing that this could not possibly be good, he took off fast as an arrow in the other direction, but it was catching up to him. So he looped back toward the Forbidden Forest, passing it in such a way that it had to take extra time to change its trajectory to follow him.

As he approached the forest, he spotted a bunch of people on the ground, coming from the Quidditch pitch. He couldn't hear what they were shouting, but they were pointing at the bludger, so he figured they were looking for the rogue ball. He kept trying to dodge it, and it kept following him.

He was a little too slow at one point, and the bludger smashed into his arm, breaking it. But being no stranger to pain, he fought to hold on, continuing to try to get away from the bloody thing.

Getting an idea, he flew up higher, then looped back around slow enough for the ball to be able to follow him, then shot straight toward the ground at full tilt, leaning forward on his broom. This caused the other people to shout and scream in worry for his safety, but at the last possible second, he shot off in a completely different direction, the bludger smashing into the ground. Turning around instantly, as he'd been prepared to do, he cast a Vanishing Charm at it. Half the ball disappeared, and the remaining half shuddered and died.

Landing at last, he noticed who the others were. It was Hermione, Ron, his three Slytherin friends, and Lockhart. Dozens of other students had witnessed the past few minutes worth of the struggle as well. He lay there, clutching his broom in his good arm, and passed out.

He woke up to the glittering teeth of Lockhart. "Not you!" Harry said, trying to get away.

"Delusional lad, doesn't know what he's saying. Don't worry Harry, I can fix your arm. I've done it hundreds of times."

"No, I need to go to the hospital wing, see a trained Healer."

"Nonsense, boy. Just lie back, and I'll-"

But Harry had no intention of lying back. Having dropped his broomstick, he used his good arm to try to grab his wand, but it was on his other side, so by the time he got it in his hand, he heard Lockhart say an incantation, and felt his arm go limp. The git had removed all the bones in his arm.

"Uh, well, yes, that can sometimes happen. But no worries, Madam Pompfrey will be able to clear it all up."

Harry whipped his wand out and shouted a hex at the git. Fittingly, it caused the handsome teacher to break out in painful pox marks all over his face. The man felt his face in terror and ran screaming away, shouting "My face! My beautiful face!"

Then McGonagall was there, and he felt his stomach drop. "Professor. I... I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let my temper get the better-"

"Don't you worry yourself, Mister Potter," McGonagall said. "Your actions are understandable, given the circumstances. Just don't do it again, and you won't be in any trouble, if I can help it."

"Oh, good. Thank you, Professor." He put his wand away, and let her conjure a stretcher and float him up to the hospital wing.

Madam Pompfrey was very angry when she found out what had happened, and gave Lockhart the third degree about it, letting him suffer untreated pox marks while she tended to Harry. Only after she'd forced him to drink a truly horrible potion called Skele-Grow, and informed him of the rough night he had in store, did she finally heal Lockhart. She was so angry with him that, instead of insisting he stay the night (as she usually did), she kicked him out the moment he was spotless again; _literally_ kicked him out.

After that, his friends came by to see how he was doing, and they talked for a time about the incident and various things, until Madam Pompfrey ushered them out as well so Harry could focus on getting better. But it was more difficult without people to distract him. He wished he had a book to read, but he didn't want to bother Netty. Getting to sleep was _very_ difficult.

Hours later, he awoke with a start, to somebody sponging his forehead in the dark.

"Get off!" He shouted. "Wait, Dobby?"

Yes, it was the same golf-ball sized eyes, the same face, the same filthy pillow case in lieu of clothing. There was no doubt it was Dobby.

"Harry has come back to Hogwarts. Dobby warned and warned Harry, but Harry did not listen. Why did Harry not go back home when he missed the train?"

Harry sat up, forcing the sponge away. Something clicked in his brain at Dobby's words. "So I was right; the barrier _was_ your doing."

"Yes, Harry Potter sir. Dobby hid and waited until the time was right, and then sealed the barrier. Dobby had to iron his hands for it."

Looking at his bandaged and blistered hands, Harry felt very little sympathy, given the circumstances.

"If you're here now, would it be correct to assume you fixed that bludger so it would go after me and kill me?"

"Not kill you, sir, never kill you!" Dobby said with horror. "Dobby is just wanting you maimed enough to go back home, where it is safe."

"Listen, Dobby, I appreciate that you think you're trying to save my life, but I do. Not. Want. Your. So-called. Help," he said, poking Dobby in the chest at each punctuation. "Hogwarts is my home. If I died, that's not going to change anything for you. Now go away before I strangle you."

"Dobby is used to death threats, sir. Dobby gets them five times a day at home." He paused to blow his nose on the filthy pillow case.

"Don't you ever wash that thing, Dobby? The house elves here all have clean towels every day."

"No, sir. Dobby's master is wanting Dobby to be filthy. He says it's Dobby's place to be like dirt."

Harry noted that he now knew the gender of the mysterious master, and was very careful not to mention to Dobby that he'd let that slip, in case the elf began hurting himself again.

"If you're going to try to send me home in pieces, Dobby, can't I at least know _why_?"

"Oh, sir, if only Dobby could. If only you knew what you mean to us dregs-"

"Cut the guilt tripping, it won't work. Just tell me what's going on and who's plotting it."

"Dobby _can't_ , sir! Dobby cannot let the dark days return! But return they do. At Hogwarts, terrible things are to happen, are perhaps already happening, and Dobby cannot let Harry Potter stay here now that history is to repeat itself, now that the Chamber of Secrets is open once more-"

Dobby froze, horror-struck. Harry grabbed him by the pillowcase and held him up before he could hurt himself with anything.

"So this _does_ have something to do with the Chamber of Secrets? And it's been opened before? Tell me, Dobby, who opened it last?"

Dobby stretched a bony hand fruitlessly toward the water jug. Harry spoke again. "I'm not a Muggle-born, Dobby, how could I be in any danger? Are you _sure_ this has nothing to do with Vol- I mean, You-Know-Who?"

"Ask no more, Harry Potter!" Dobby whined. "Ask no more of poor Dobby! Just go home, Harry Potter!"

"I _am_ home, Dobby. Hogwarts is my home, and my friends are my true family. I have no love of the Dursleys, no loyalty to them. But if something is going to happen here, and Muggle-borns are in danger, I will fight and I will die to protect my new family, if I have to. You might as well give up trying to save my life, Dobby, because I. Am. Not. Leaving!"

"Harry Potter risks his life for his friends! How noble! How valiant! But Harry Potter must leave this place, go back to the Dursleys, you simply-" They both heard a noise. Harry was unsurprised; Dobby was making a racket, and Harry had not put up any privacy wards.

"Dobby must go now, Harry Potter," the elf whispered, terror in his eyes. With a crack, he was gone. Harry silently cursed to himself and rolled over, feigning sleep, as someone was approaching the hospital wing.

Harry turned to watch as Dumbledore came in, wearing his night things and seeking the matron.

"What happened?" Madam Pompfrey asked.

"Another attack. Minerva found him on the stairs."

"We think he was bringing grapes to Potter," said McGonagall.

Harry silently watched in horror as Colin Creevy, a camera to his eye, was carried in, stiff as stone. A comment by the matron confirmed he was petrified. The teachers tried opening the camera to see if he'd gotten a picture of his attacker, but the puff of acrid smoke that resulted made that a no-go.

"Melted. What does this mean, Dumbledore?"

"It means the Chamber of Secrets is indeed open once more."

"But then, Albus, _who_?"

"Not who, but _how_ ," Dumbledore said cryptically. McGonagall clearly had no idea what he meant, either.

Note: I pronounce "Moste Potente Potions" with the e's at the end silent, unlike Steven Fry, and I will fight anyone who disagrees. :-D Call it an aspie thing.


	5. Chapter 5

Harry Potter and the Trouble With Neurotypicals: Book Two.

Or, "Aspie Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

Note: I do not own this. J. K. Rowling does. This is just fan fiction. No money is being made.

Note 2: There may be a few bits and pieces lifted word-for-word from the canon material. I tried to do that as little as possible, though.

Chapter 5: The Dueling Club

The next morning, Harry woke up in the hospital wing momentarily confused, before he remembered what happened. He glanced over at Colin. He didn't know the boy well, but he wondered what his parents were being told, if anything, as he was released and made his way to look for Ron and Hermione.

After speaking with Percy Weasley, he figured out they were in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, so he headed up there, finding them brewing the potion in a cauldron in a toilet, a waterproof fire under the cauldron.

"This is so unsanitary," Harry said. "But I suppose the fire takes care of any germs."

"Your arm all better?"

"Yeah. And guess what?"

"What?"

"It turns out Dobby did the bludger, supposedly to save my life. He wanted me maimed enough to be sent back to the Dursley's."

"Wow, mate. If he doesn't stop trying to save your life, he's going to kill you."

Harry nodded. "Oh, something else happened as well."

"You mean Colin?" Hermione asked. "We heard. The whole school knows."

"Oh, figures you would. But there's more. Dobby said the Chamber has been opened before!"

They stared at him a moment.

"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened _before_?" Hermione said.

"Well that settles it, Lucius must have opened it last time, and he taught Draco how to do it."

"I dunno... from things Dobby's said before, I don't think the Malfoys are involved. I once asked him if Vol-er, You-Know-Who was involved, and he said he wasn't, but he looked like he was trying to hint at something, like it might be connected to Voldy after all."

"Well Lucius was a Death Eater. One of You-Know-Who's followers," Ron explained. "He claimed he'd been under a spell, but my dad never believed it. Got out of Azkaban cuz of his money, Dad reckons. Anyway, Lucius being a Death Eater, that's a connection to You-Know-Who."

"Hmm... maybe. I asked Dobby if Voldy had a brother, and Dobby's response made me think I was getting warmer."

"Maybe You-Know-Who is a Malfoy?" Ron mused.

"Voldemort Malfoy?"

"No no, the name he uses can't be real, unless it's foreign. Which I suppose it could be. But anyway, he could be... his surname _could_ be Malfoy."

"Well possibly. But they can't be brothers, or Dobby would have said yes to my question."

"Yeah, but I think You-Know-Who is older than Lucius. Could be Lucius's father, or uncle. That'd explain Dobby trying to hint that you were getting warmer."

Harry pondered a moment. "If the monster in the chamber is some kind of snake, I think the Heir would have to be a parseltongue," he said thoughtfully.

"You've hidden yours pretty well, considering you were raised in the Muggle world. The Malfoys could be hiding their parseltongue gift."

"But Draco was with me when I heard the monster that first time. And if he's a parseltongue, he's a great actor; he didn't react at all to the voice I heard."

Ron looked uneasy. "He could've... given the creature a pre-arranged signal? Maybe? To take some of the suspicion off him, you know?"

"I guess..."

"Harry, I'm already making this potion," Hermione said to him. "I might as well-"

The door opened then, and they all went quiet.

"Harry?" asked a familiar dreamy voice.

"Over here, Luna."

Harry saw Moaning Myrtle come up out of her stall and look at Luna. "Oh hi there, Luna," said the miserable ghost, sounding a little happier than usual.

"Hello, Myrtle. How are you today?"

"Miserable, of course. But it's nice to see you. I wish I'd known someone as nice as you when I was alive."

Ron rolled his eyes at the both of them. Luna and Mytle kept chatting quietly as Harry and the others continued brewing the Polyjuice Potion. When Luna and Myrtle finished talking, though, Luna came to talk with the three of them, and they filled her in on what they'd been talking about. When told about the possible Malfoy/Voldemort connection, she got all wide eyed.

"Oh yes," she said excitedly. "I've heard that the Malfoys have been funding the Ministry's research into Imperio-Worms."

"Imperio worms?" Ron asked, holding back laughter. "What the bloody hell are Imperio worms?"

"They crawl in your ear and take over your brain. Fudge wants them so he can make an army of soldiers that never disobey commands, and will die for him. You can read all about it in the latest edition of The Quibbler."

"That sounds like the Imperious Curse, but with creatures" Hermione noted.

"Yes, that's where the name came from."

"But the Imperious Curse is illegal. And even if it weren't, they wouldn't need creatures to do it, since the curse already exists."

"Yes, but Imperious Curses can go wrong. They're difficult to do. Anyone can put an Imperio Worm in someone's ear, though."

"Like I said, it's ill-"

"Yes, but 'illegal' just means the general public isn't allowed to use it. Governments have all the power, and power tends to corrupt. Add magic to the mix, that's basically absolute power. Which tends to corrupt absolutely. You should read what some of the Muggle governments do, Hermione. They have their own research into mind-controlled soldiers, and they don't even have magic. When you get back to the Muggle world, you should look up 'Project MK Ultra.' It'll open your eyes."

Hermione looked to Harry for support against Luna's ravings, only to find Harry looking impressed. "What?" he asked. "I've heard of it, too. Years of reading anything I could find at the library, I've run into some weird things. But she's right, the American group called the CIA really _has_ done experiments into mind control. So Luna's theory about these Imperio Worms could have merit."

"Thank you, Harry, that was kind of you."

He shrugged. "Not really. Just honest."

Luna nodded vaguely. Hermione rolled her eyes and went back to work on the potion.

The next few weeks passed without incident, aside from Ron giving Draco side-eyes every time they had a MAC meeting. The more such meetings they had, the more Harry was convinced Draco had nothing to do with this whole Chamber business, but he kept his mouth shut; they were brewing the potion already, and it was almost done. Might as well try it to see if the theory had any merit.

One day, they saw - pinned to the notice boards - something about a Duelling Club. Harry thought that was a great idea, and wondered why he hadn't thought of it himself. Deciding it was useful, Harry, Hermione, and Ron all went, and convinced Luna to come with them as well.

At 8 o'clock that night, they hurried to the Great Hall, where all the House tables had been moved out of the way, and a golden stage put up in the middle of the room, presumably for demonstrations.

"I wonder who's teaching us? Someone told me Flitwick was a dueling champion in his youth, maybe it'll be him."

"As long as it's not-" Harry started, then groaned. Gilderoy Lockhart stepped out onto the stage, accompanied by Snape.

Lockhart waved for silence. "Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Great!

"Now Professor Dumbledore gave me permission to start this little dueling club, to train you up in case you have to defend yourselves, as I have done on many occasions. Blah blah blah blah," it sounded to Harry as he began tuning it out.

"Blah blah blah my assistant, Professor Snape," he continued to drone on in his insufferable voice. As if he needed that shite added to the press and noise of the crowd.

"Wouldn't it be good if they killed each other?" Ron muttered in Harry's ear.

Harry didn't react to that, but did twitch his lip in amusement at how much disgust and loathing Snape was directing at Lockhart; it was good to see Snape directing his loathing at someone other than himself, for once.

The demonstration duel between Lockhart and Snape went much as he'd expected: Lockhart being a bumbling fool, and Snape soundly knocking the dunce on his arse. Harry almost laughed aloud at Lockhart's poor attempt to demonstrate the Protego charm, feeling glad he knew how to do it already. Given the recent Chamber of Secrets stuff, he'd been spending some spare time every week practicing defensive spells.

When Lockhart finally noticed Snape's murderous facial expression, he started pairing them off. Ron and Harry were going to duel, but Snape split them up, putting Ron with Seamus and Harry with Draco, which did make _some_ sense, since Ron's old wand had started doing odd things in the last couple weeks. Draco grinned at Harry, a hint of malicious glee there despite their budding civil acquaintance. Hermione got paired off with a Slytherin named Millicent Bulstrode, who was very sturdily built, and Luna got to spar with Angela.

Draco and Harry climbed onto the stage, Harry feeling very nervous. He didn't like being the center of attention one bit, and here he was in the middle of a crowd. He took a moment to take a sip of Calming Draught, which helped. It helped even more to focus on Draco instead of the crowd.

"Face your partners and bow," called Lockhart. "Wands at the ready!" he shouted.

"When I count to three," he continued, "cast your charms to disarm your opponents - _only_ to disarm them. We don't want any accidents."

Harry had been thinking while Lockhart talked, and as the man counted up to three, was not surprised by Draco starting on two; it was a very Slytherin thing to do. He countered it with a shield charm, which impressed everyone in the room; even Snape looked impressed despite himself.

Almost the instant Draco's spell bounced off his shield, he shot back "Expelliarmus!" The blond boy's wand flew into the air and Harry caught it with his free hand. Draco did not look pleased.

Lockhart had him give Draco his wand back, and they tried again. Once more the count up to three. Draco tried going at one, but that didn't surprise Harry either. He shot a few things that bounced off Harry's shield, then Harry shot back with Expelliarmus again, even though Draco was shooting actual jinxes at him. But the other boy was managing to dodge Harry's spells or else snatch his wand out of the air whenever one of Harry's spells hit its mark.

Finally, one of Malfoy's jinxes got past Harry's defenses, and Harry was knocked back on his arse. That was the point where Harry grew tired of Malfoy ignoring the rules, and decided to ignore them himself. He shot back with several jinxes and hexes of his own, and soon it became a shooting match, Lockhart running around shouting at them, stopping them temporarily.

This time, before the count-up, Snape whispered something into Draco's ear, and Draco looked both gleeful and concerned, but nodded. When they went again, Harry once more did a shield charm, but it was unnecessary.

"Serpensortia!" Draco had bellowed.

Exploding out of the end of his wand came a long black snake with a hood; some kind of cobra? It looked very angry, and slithered toward Harry. Harry paused, not knowing what to do. He didn't want to talk to it, giving away his secret power; and speaking at all around a snake would require concentration to stay in English. But people were screaming. Harry stepped back a few steps.

"Don't move, Potter," Snape said with an air of droll amusement. "I'll take care of it for you."

Harry had just enough time to wonder if Snape meant he was going to kill the snake, when Lockhart stepped in and tried taking care of it himself.

It was a disaster, of course. Whatever spell the imbecile had used made the snake fly into the air and land with a smack, making it go from angry to _pissed the hell off_. It reared and hissed at the nearest person it could see, ready to strike.

Not trusting himself to speak, Harry screamed out 'Stupefy!' in his mind, pointing his wand at the snake. It had been a long shot, as he didn't even know if it was possible to do spells without speaking, but it paid off; a burst of red light hit the snake and it fell over, passed out.

Everyone stared at him, even Snape, who looked dumbfounded. The looks were so stunned and impressed that he wondered if he'd invented some new technique on the fly. Taking advantage of their stunned silence, he walked forward and knelt down to look at the snake. Then he saw Antigone nearby, and got her attention.

"Antigone, do you know how to conjure a cage or something?"

"Wha? Oh, yeah... I think so."

She took her wand out and conjured a weird, flawed goldfish bowl with a metal lid. It looked equivalent in craftsmanship to a bowl he'd made in first grade art class once, but served well enough. He levitated the snake into the fishbowl and put the lid on, glad to see the lid had holes in it.

"What are you _doing_ , Potter?" Snape asked derisively.

Harry looked up at Snape so he wouldn't accidentally slip into Parseltongue. "I'm rescuing this snake, sir. It's just an innocent animal, it never asked to be used as a weapon."

Snape sneered. "Potter, it is a spell snake. It isn't real."

"Water from a wand is real enough to drink. Chairs conjured with magic are real enough to burn. This snake is real enough to have instincts and feelings. So I'm rescuing it."

"Potter, I do realize your fame may be getting to your-"

"I don't care about my fame. I never knew I was famous until I got to school, and I've _never_ liked being famous. I doubt I ever will. I can barely tolerate lots of people looking at me."

"Be that as it may, you cannot keep a venomous snake in your dormitory, Potter. It is a danger to other students."

Harry glared at the man. "Maybe you should have thought of the danger to the students before you told Draco to use that spell, _Professor_ ," he snapped at the man, who looked taken aback.

First pausing to take a breath, Harry said more calmly, "I will find somewhere safe to keep him, sir, while I try to figure out how to get him back to his natural environment. He won't be in the dormitories or the common room."

With that, he took the snake in its container off the stage, everyone giving him a wide berth to let him through. There was some muttering as he left, but he didn't care. He had seen himself in this snake - brought into this world he didn't understand suddenly, some people fearing him and others trying to hurt him. He wasn't going to let it be another victim.

He got as far as Griffindor Tower before he realized he had no idea where to put it. He needed help from someone who knew the castle better than he did. Suddenly, Netty came to mind.

"Netty," he said aloud.

With a crack, she appeared. "Sir is calling Netty, sir?"

"Ah yes, Netty. I need your help, if you can." He explained the situation to her as best he could, and what he wanted, not sure she could help. When he finished, she looked excited.

"Netty is knowing a place, sir. We call it the come-and-go room. Come, sir, Netty will show you!"

A few minutes later, they were on the seventh floor corridor by a tapestry of dancing ballet trolls, and Netty was teaching Harry how to get into the come-and-go room, also known as the Room of Requirement. He walked three times past the place, thinking of a place to keep a snake for an unknown amount of time. On the third time past, a door appeared in the previously blank wall, and he and Netty went in.

The room inside was mid-sized. It had a huge terrarium against one wall, and was full of branches for a snake to climb on and places to hide or nest, with magically-heated rocks to keep its cold blood warm. There were also comfy chairs for people to sit on and look at the terrarium.

Against another wall was a different, smaller terrarium made for rats, and several confused-looking rats stood around in there, exploring their new environment. Leaning next to that terrarium was a rat-trap on the end of a long wooden handle, which Harry guessed was to catch rats to feed the snake.

As he was levitating the snake into its terrarium, it began to stir. By the time it woke up completely, the lid was on the terrarium.

" _Hi,_ " he said to it in parseltongue. " _Sorry about stunning you, but it was the only way I could save your life without revealing my status as a parselmouth to the whole school._ "

The snake looked up at him. " _You... saved me? But I was going to attack you. And then I was going to attack that other human._ "

" _It's okay, that wasn't your fault. The human that flung you into the air is an idiot. He was trying to kill you, I think, but did something else by accident. If you had bitten that boy you were hissing at, they would have destroyed you for sure._ "

" _Then I thank you for saving my life._ "

" _You're welcome. Are you hungry?_ "

" _Not at the moment. Thanks for the offer, though._ "

" _Do you have a name?_ "

" _No. My people do not use names, usually._ "

" _Do you want one?_ "

The snake looked thoughtful. " _I suppose so._ "

" _Are you a boy snake or a girl snake?_ "

" _I have laid eggs before."_

" _Girl, then. Hmm... what do you think about the name Cleopatra?_ _Cleo for short?_ "

 _"I like that. It sounds regal._ "

"Netty," he said to the elf, "I'm going to have to go back to my common room now. If you could keep an eye on Cleopatra here, just once in a while, I would appreciate it."

"Netty will do that, sir."

"Thanks."

He turned back to the snake. " _I need to go to my own nest, Cleo. Netty will keep an eye on you now and then whenever I'm not here. I'll see you later, okay?_ "

" _That is fine. It is warm in here, I shall sleep as well. I thank you again._ "

" _You're welcome._ "

Rushing out the door as soon as he could, he had to run to get back to the common room before curfew. He came in to see a lot of people staring at him. He ignored most of them and went over to Ron and Hermione.

"You rescued that snake, mate," Ron said. "Not quite as bad as it could've gone, I know, but people are still talking about it."

"Where is the snake now, Harry?"

"Her name is Cleopatra, and it's a long story where she is. She's locked up safe away from anyone else, though." He said that last loud enough for others around them to hear, which immediately set them off telling everyone else.

That out of the way, he cast privacy wards. "Now for the long story," he said, and launched into the story of the Room of Requirement.

"Woah!" Ron said, amazed. "That place sounds awesome!"

"Yes," Harry agreed, "it's quite cool. Might be useful as well. I think we should keep it a secret for now."

"For sure. Now tell us, why'd you save that snake?"

He sighed with annoyance. "I told Snape why, didn't you hear me?"

"But there's more to it, isn't there, Harry?" Hermione asked.

"Well, yeah. I empathized with her. You know, given what she said in the Room, I reckon she's real. An actual, live snake, summoned from who-knows-where."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. She says she's laid eggs before. Which means she has memories from before today. And she has a personality."

"Hmm... well that's something else to look into. I don't know anything about that, but you had a point earlier that water from a wand is drinkable."

Harry nodded, and got his books out to do some schoolwork, with his earmuffs on to drown out the chatter in the rest of the room. But music would have worked better; he had always done his best work listening to an old cassette tape he'd played on one of Dudley's old Walkmans, that he'd broken and Harry had repaired. He began wondering if it was possible to make a portable magical music player, briefly, before getting back to work.

The next day, they awoke to find that a blizzard had come through, and the snow was so thick that Herbology had been canceled. So Harry went to the library to study and do some work. At the table next to his were a bunch of Hufflepuffs, including Justin Finch-Fletchley. Harry worked quietly for a long time, the whole time also aware that the Hufflepuffs were talking quietly. It annoyed him mildly, but he ignored it.

Eventually, though, Justin came over and stood there like he wanted to say something. Harry looked up at him.

"Hi, Justin."

"Hi Harry. Er... I wanted to thank you for saving me from that snake, last night. Even if you did rescue it as well. But you had a point, it's just an animal. And that spell of Lockhart's made it angry. Anyway, thanks," he finished a little lamely, holding his hand out.

Taking and shaking the boy's hand, Harry said, "No problem."

Another boy came over, holding out a hand and looking pompous. "Ernie McMillain," he said. "That was an impressive bit of spellwork last night. Second year, and you not only did a stunning spell, but did it non-verbally, too! Stunning spell is a fourth-year spell. And the teachers don't start teaching non-verbal spells until sixth year."

"Really? Well I knew about the stunning spell being advanced; I checked out some copies of the later-year spellbooks and read ahead for the stunning spell. Figured it would come in handy, what with You-Know-Who having been after me last year, and now this Chamber of Secrets business.

"As to the non-verbal spell, well..." he looked uncomfortable. "I didn't even know if it was possible, but that snake just appearing all of a sudden struck me dumb, and I just reacted without thinking. It's a bloody miracle it worked at all. I've tried a few other non-verbal spells since then, and nothing's happened." This was true; he'd tried some last night before bed, and nothing had happened. "So it was a fluke."

"Still impressive, though."

"Yeah, I guess so."

Justin smiled, then looked like he'd suddenly remembered something. "Oh, damn. I left my Charms book in my dormitory, I'd better go get it now, it'll take ages to get there and then to Charms. Well thanks again, Harry."

"You're welcome, Justin."

Justin waved as he left the library, and the other Hufflepuffs all sat back down to study again. But after a couple minutes, something occurred to him. Harry turned to them in concern.

"Should he be going out alone with the Chamber of Secrets monster on the loose?"

They all looked in horror at him, nodding fervently. So he and they grabbed their things and rushed out after Justin. But it was too late; they found him in a corridor, petrified. Even more alarming, Nearly-Headless Nick was petrified as well, and had turned pitch black, and smoky.

All the nervous talking and scared noises that broke out at this sight must have attracted Peeves, because he showed up, saw the scene, and started screaming at the top of his voice, "ATTACK! ATTACK! ANOTHER ATTACK! NO MORTAL OR GHOST IS SAFE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! ATTAAAACK!"

Crash — crash — crash — door after door flew open along the corridor and people flooded out from classes that were in session. Harry and the Hufflepuffs gathered around Justin to keep him from being stepped on by the others, but some people managed to have the unsettling experience of standing inside Nearly-Headless Nick.

McGonagall made a loud crack from her wand for attention, and organized the students so Justin could be taken to the Hospital Wing, while one of the students was tasked with wafting Nearly-Headless Nick there with a fan.

With that done, she turned to Harry and the Hufflepuffs. "Did any of you witness the attack?" she asked hopefully.

"No Professor," said Ernie. "Justin had gone to get his Charms book from his dorm, as he'd forgotten it. He was barely gone for three minutes when we rushed to get our things together and go after him..." he looked distraught. "I should have just left my stuff and rushed out! This is all my fault!"

Several others began saying things to the same effect, but McGonagall made more noise for attention.

"Now, boys and girls, don't lose your heads. This isn't your fault. If you'd left your things behind, you might've gotten attacked as well, and one of you might have died. So don't blame yourselves, any of you."

She then noticed Harry. "Mr. Potter? Where were you during this?" Harry gulped, remembering how he'd been found by the first attack site.

"Harry was with us, Professor," Ernie said. "He was the one who said he didn't think it was safe for Justin to go out alone."

"Yes," Hannah Abbot agreed. "And before that, Harry was studying at the table next to ours, then Justin was talking with him before he took off."

"Oh. Well that's good. I didn't think Mr. Potter was to blame, and this seems to prove that. If Harry was with you the whole time, he could not possibly be responsible. I just wish we knew who _was_."

Harry once more considered telling one of the teachers about the voice he'd heard before the first attack, but once again, he was too afraid to reveal such a hated and feared gift to anyone in a position of power, even if it might save lives. He knew it was kind of cowardly, but hey, he was only 12 years old, and who knew what the consequences of teachers having that information might be in the years to come? So, angry at himself, he continued to keep his silence.

This new, double attack had everyone scared, especially with what happened to Nick. What could do that to a ghost, after all? It was a real mystery, and a terrifying one at that. Harry was starting to wonder why the school wasn't being evacuated, given the circumstances. Granted, it was a bit different from his old schools, not the least of which reasons was it was a boarding school, but still... he wondered if the reason for the school still being open was some cultural difference of the wizarding world.

As Christmas approached, very few people were signing up to stay at the castle over the break; just Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle. It was suspicious behavior from Malfoy; his parents doted on him, so why was he staying? But it was useful, since the potion wouldn't be ready until Christmas.

The day before everyone left for home, Harry was talking with Antigone, Ron, and Hermione in the MAC classroom. He was telling Antigone about the Polyjuice Potion and their theory.

"Ah, Polyjuice Potion. You got the bits of whoever you're changing into?"

"What?" Ron exclaimed. "I'm drinking nothing with Crabbe's toenails in it!"

"You could pluck out a few hairs," Antigone pointed out.

"Well that's better, I guess."

"As a matter of fact," Hermione said, holding a vial of hair up, "I have mine. Millicent Bulstrode. Got it off her robes at the dueling club the other day, when she was trying to strangle me."

Antigone winced. "I wouldn't use that if I were you. Millicent has a cat in her dorm. Sheds all over everything, it does."

"Oh," Hermione said, tossing it in her bag. "Yeah, that would be bad."

"Why? What would happen if you tried cat hair?"

"She'd look like a were-cat or something. It would take weeks for a Healer to undo that damage."

Ron snickered. "I wouldn't mind seeing that, but I guess it's just as well."

Antigone sighed. "I'd offer one of my hairs, or Angela's, or Danzia's, but we're known associates of yours, so Malfoy would never open up around us. Anyway, Harry, the newest password is," she made a face, " _pure-blood._ "

They raised their eyebrows at her.

"Don't look at me like that, I sure as Hell didn't pick it. Dunno who did, in fact."

She then spent some time drawing them a map of how to get to the Slytherin common room. It was a very good map, very detailed.

"Do you have a plan for getting Crabbe and Goyle's hairs?"

"Yes," Hermione said. "They're gluttons and idiots, they'll eat anything they find. So I plan to make some muffins with sleeping draught in them, and have these two float them somewhere for the lumps to find them."

"Excellent plan. I can attest to their stupidity. Though they are clever in their own way, on some things. Nothing terribly useful for Hogwarts, though, best I can tell."

A small sound caught Harry's attention, and he looked up. Luna was in the doorway, looking as though she'd wandered in by accident.

"Hi Luna!"

Antigone giggled and gave Ron a significant look, but he ignored her. Harry got up and went over to Luna.

"Well I might as well go," Antigone said. "Let those two have some more time together before the break, since Harry's not leaving but she is."

Though they'd been a bit worried that something might go wrong, when the day finally came to do the plan, everything went smoothly. Harry and Ron floated the muffins in the middle of the hall, and the two gluttonous idiots snatched them up, ate them right there, and passed out at once. They then took the larger boys' shoes, and went back to Myrtle's bathroom with them and a pair of larger uniforms to change into.

Hermione ladled out two doses of the potion, and Harry and Ron put their bits of Crabbe and Goyle in their potions, which hissed, frothed, and changed color. Crabbe's looked like boogers, while Goyle's looked like dark, murky brown mud.

Going into separate stalls to change out of their clothes and transform into Crabbe and Goyle, they drank their potions. Harry's tasted like overcooked cabbage. After some painful moments, their skin boiling and bubbling and their bodies aching as they grew in height and mass, finally it was over, and Harry looked into the mirror. He had to take his glasses off and put them in his pocket, since Goyle didn't need glasses. Pulling Goyle's shoes on, he then left the stall.

Hermione sighed, wishing them well as they left.

Antigone's map was a huge help, they found the place in short order and said the password, going through the hole in the wall that opened up. When they walked in, Draco looked up.

"Were you two in the Great Hall all this time? I was just about to go looking for you. I know we're all pure-bloods, but with no idea who the Heir is, it doesn't hurt to be too careful."

They both stared, dumbfounded, at him. This must have been a common thing for them, though, because Draco didn't react to it. "Don't you have any ideas?" Harry said, hearing Goyle's voice as he did.

"Of course I don't, Goyle, how many times do I have to tell you? Father hasn't told me anything about the last time it was opened, as I'm not supposed to know about that. I heard somebody actually died that time, though."

Despite all the time he'd been spending with Draco, Harry was surprised to hear a tone of slight sadness in the blond boy's words. As though sensing Harry's thoughts, Draco glared at him.

"I know what you're going to say, Goyle, and I don't care. Father's never had anything to do with Muggles, and I have, thanks to Potter. I'm not going to stop going to Potter's MAC meetings just because you don't like it. I'm not my father. If you don't like it, you can shove it up your backside. And that goes for you, too, Crabbe. You don't have to share my opinions, god knows you're too thick to get anything useful out of MAC, but what does it matter? The Dark Lord is dead. And I don't know if you've noticed or not, but the wizarding world isn't doing too well either. I reckon we could use some fresh blood. I'd rather we all became mudbloods than go extinct. Nobody would be around to keep the Muggles ignorant of magic if that happened, and even though they're not as bad as I thought they were, god only knows what would happen if they suddenly came face to face with unicorns or dragons or whatever. Probably hunt them to extinction."

When they still didn't say anything, he continued. "Just face it, our parents are wrong. Not having had any real experience of Muggles, they make assumptions, rumors about them spread, and it's all just ignorance and misinformation. Then people like the Dark Lord feed on all that nonsense as a tool to get power." He sighed. "You don't like it when people hate on us Slytherins just because they're ignorant of what we're really like, so I'd think you two would've thought at least a little about how Muggleborns feel."

Ron opened his mouth to speak, and once more Draco interrupted. "Yeah, Crabbe, I know Salazar Slytherin didn't like Muggles or Muggleborns. But that was back when Muggles were killing witches and wizards, so his feelings made sense for the time. But that was hundreds of years ago, and a lot's changed since then. They've gotten a lot smarter, for one, thanks to their science. You know they actually make movies about magic now? Movies where magic is shown in a positive light, no less. I reckon most of them would be fine living with wizards and witches, these days."

Finally recovering his wits, Harry asked, "D'you know if the person who opened the Chamber last time was caught?"

"Oh, yeah … whoever it was was expelled," said Malfoy. "They're probably still in Azkaban."

"Azkaban?" said Harry, puzzled.

"Azkaban — the wizard prison, Goyle," said Malfoy, looking at him in disbelief. "Honestly, if you were any slower, you'd be going backward."

"Oh."

"Anyway, you two, I'm going to bed now."

With that, Draco left and went up the stairs, leaving the two of them to be silently impressed.

"You know, it's a real shame the real Crabbe and Goyle didn't hear all that," Hermione said after they told her all about what Draco had said. "It would be good for them to hear it, even if they didn't listen."

"I dunno, I kind of got the impression he was repeating things he's said before."

"Ah well," she said. "They're thick enough that repetition might be needed to get the message through to their brains."

"I doubt that'd help," Ron said.

That night, Harry lay in bed thinking about Draco's words, feeling warm inside that he had been right about Draco, and even more warm that he was the reason for the blond boy's change of heart. He had very happy dreams that night.

Note one: Since the Room of Requirement cannot make food, even for animals, the rats the room provided for Cleo had been loose in the castle, until the Room summoned them, which is why they looked confused. Just wild rats were used, though; no pets.


	6. Chapter 6

****Harry Potter and the Trouble With Neurotypicals: Book Two.****

Or, "Aspie Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

By = Fayanora

Note: I do not own this. J. K. Rowling does. This is just fan fiction. No money is being made.

Note 2: There may be a few bits and pieces lifted word-for-word from the canon material. I tried to do that as little as possible, though.

 ** **Chapter 6: Riddle Me This****

The next day, Harry woke to find himself wondering what was going to happen with the Dueling Club. It seemed a shame for it to stop, just because it had an inept teacher. He decided to find out its status, and suggest a different teacher for it if it was still ongoing.

Standing up and going over the the mirror, he took off the satin 'bonnet' that protects his hair at night, and got to work trying to get his hair into some semblance of order.

At breakfast, still a small affair because of so few people being there the day after Christmas, Harry walked over to Dumbledore at the staff table and waited for the headmaster to finish his bite of scrambled eggs.

"Why hello there, Har-er, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore said, remembering he was teaching these days. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Well I was just wondering if we could discuss the Dueling Club later, when we're both done eating."

Dumbledore blinked. "Why of course, Har- Mr. Potter. You know where my office is, I take it?"

"Yes, sir, I do."

"Well, in that case, I do rather like lemon drops."

Harry stared at him curiously.

"It's the password for the gargoyle," Dumbledore explained quietly. "Lemon drops, I mean."

"Ah. Okay. Thank you, sir."

"You're quite welcome, young man."

After breakfast, Harry went to the gargoyle, gave it the password, and went up the revolving steps to wait for Dumbledore. The room was empty still, but for a young bird with feathers that were starting to look very pretty, and – oddly – a pile of ash at the bottom of the cage. Surely Dumbledore didn't smoke, did he? And surely he wouldn't put his ashes out in his pet's cage? Harry was still regarding the ashes with confusion when Dumbledore came into the room.

"Ah, I see you have met Fawkes, my pet phoenix," the old man said.

"Oh! Well that explains the ashes."

Dumbledore chuckled. "Yes, he had a burning day recently. He's looking much better now than he did then, but still not to his usual glory. Anyway, Harry—er-oh nevermind... anyway, you wished to discuss the Dueling Club?"

"Yes. I was wondering if it was going to continue."

"I had not been planning on it, no. Not after young Mr. Malfoy summoned a dangerous snake during a duel."

"I believe that was Professor Snape's idea, sir. At least, he was whispering in Malfoy's ear just before it happened."

Dumbledore frowned slightly. "Thank you for telling me this, Harry. I will discuss it with Professor Snape." He brightened suddenly. "So it seems we need to replace Professors Lockhart and Snape for the Dueling Club to continue. Did you have any suggestions?"

"Someone said Flitwick was a dueling champion in his youth."

"Yes, indeed he was. But that many students, we shall need at least two teachers to keep order."

"What about yourself, sir? You defeated Grindelwald in a duel, and Voldemort still feared you, even at the height of his powers."

"Me? Well, I suppose I do have the talent, and I do like to teach. One Dueling Club lesson a week should not be too much of an added burden to my Wizard Studies course."

The headmaster thought for a moment. Then his eyes twinkled. "Yes, Harry, I believe I shall ask Professor Flitwick and perhaps also Professor McGonagall, if she's willing, to help me out. With Voldemort having tried to regain his body last year, and all this Chamber business this year, continuing the Dueling Club would not go amiss, with the right teachers. Ah, but I shall have to disappoint poor Gilderoy. Oh well, he will just have to live with it.

"So, with that all settled, was there anything else, Harry?"

Harry thought. "No, I think that's it for now."

"Good. Now run along, enjoy your holiday."

Harry nodded, and left the room.

The next several weeks went by without much of any note happening. Malfoy continued coming to MAC meetings, Wizard Studies class was very interesting, Dumbledore had indeed started the Dueling Club up again with Flitwick and McGonagall helping him ensure there were no more incidents, and the attacks had stopped for now.

About the only thing unusual in that time was that Malfoy's standing among most of the Slytherins seemed to be going down; he was no longer hanging out with Crabbe and Goyle, and started spending time with Angela, Antigone, Danzia, and Willem Stone instead, schedules permitting. The rest of the Slytherins gave him the cold shoulder, but he kept his head high and seemed happy with his new friends.

It wasn't until the final week of January that something else happened. Harry, Antigone, and Ron were on their way to the MAC classroom one day when they heard yelling from the bathroom of Moaning Myrtle.

"What the heck is Filch yelling about?" Antigone asked.

"You don't think someone else's been attacked?" said Ron tensely.

They stood still, their heads inclined toward Filch's voice, which sounded quite hysterical.

"... _ _even more work for me! Mopping all night, like I haven't got enough to do! No, this is the final straw, I'm going to Dumbledore!__ "

They kept listening, as they heard footsteps, and when they were sure he was gone, they went around the corner for a closer look. The corridor floor was flooded again, and Myrtle was wailing. Harry cast __Impervious__ on his robes and shoes, and went inside. Antigone and Ron followed suit.

There was water everywhere; even the candles had been doused by the water. If Harry hadn't been so sure nobody ever used this bathroom because of Myrtle, he'd be more disgusted than he was.

"What's wrong, Myrtle?" Harry asked.

"Who's that?" glugged Myrtle miserably. "Come to throw something else at me?"

"Why would I do that? That would be rude."

"Don't ask me," Myrtle shouted, emerging with a wave of yet more water, which splashed onto the already sopping floor. "Here I am, minding my own business, and someone thinks it's funny to throw a book at me. …"

"But it can't hurt you if someone throws something at you," said Harry, reasonably. "I mean, it'd just go right through you, wouldn't it?"

He had said the wrong thing. Myrtle puffed herself up and shrieked, "Let's all throw books at Myrtle, because __she__ can't feel it! Ten points if you can get it through her stomach! Fifty points if it goes through her head! Well, ha, ha, ha! What a lovely game, I __don't__ think!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound cruel. I'm not very good at this whole 'social' thing," he explained. "So, er... who threw it at you?"

" _ _I__ don't know. … I was just sitting in the U-bend, thinking about death, and it fell right through the top of my head," said Myrtle, glaring at them. "It's over there, it got washed out. …"

The three of them looked where she pointed. A small, thin, shabby, wet book lay there. Harry stepped forward to pick it up, but Ron suddenly flung out an arm to hold him back.

"What?" said Harry.

"Are you crazy?" said Ron. "It could be dangerous."

" _ _Dangerous__?" said Harry, confused. "Come off it, how could it be dangerous?"

"He's right," Antigone said, nodding.

"Trust me, I know what I'm talking about," said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book. "Some of the books the Ministry's confiscated — Dad's told me — there was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read __Sonnets of a Sorcerer__ spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could __never stop reading__! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed. And —"

"All right, I've got the point," said Harry. "But what do we do about it, then?"

Antigone got out her wand and floated the book as close to her as she dared, turning it around in the air with her wand, even opening it that way. Then she cast several spells for revealing hidden magic, and got nothing.

"Okay, I know I'm only a 4th year," she said, her gray eyes regarding the book, "but it appears to be an ordinary book to me."

Harry snatched it out of the air and flipped through it. He saw at once that it was a diary, and the faded year on the cover told him it was fifty years old. He opened it eagerly. On the first page he could just make out the name "T. M. Riddle" in smudged ink.

"I wonder who this Riddle guy is?" Harry said. The others shrugged.

Harry flipped through it. There was nothing at all written on it, it seemed. If it had been written in, surely there would be some faded words somewhere; the whole thing couldn't wash out without leaving some sort of sign of having been used.

"Either he never wrote anything in it, or the words are hidden by magic," Harry said.

"I wonder why someone wanted to flush it away?" said Ron curiously.

Harry turned to the back cover of the book and saw the printed name of a variety store on Vauxhall Road, London.

"He must've been Muggle-born," said Harry thoughtfully. "To have bought a diary from Vauxhall Road. Or Muggle raised, like me."

"Well, it's not much use to you," said Ron. He dropped his voice. "Fifty points if you can get it through Myrtle's nose."

"Ron!" Antigone said in disapproval.

Harry, however, pocketed it.

For reasons even he didn't know, Harry was fascinated by the diary, carrying it around with him and opening it on occasion to look at it, even though it was blank. The name even sounded familiar, even though it wasn't possible, as he'd had no friends before Hogwarts thanks to Dudley. So he found himself going everywhere he could to find the name, and actually – by some miracle – managed to find it in the Trophy Room, where Riddle had two awards displayed; one for magical merit, another was an award for special services to the school.

When he was done looking at those, he went to the library to try to find some reference to Riddle in the archives, but he found nothing.

He even thought briefly about asking Dumbledore about Riddle, since the headmaster was old enough to have been teaching 50 years ago, but immediately part of his mind said that was silly, that Dumbledore had known too many students over the years to recognize the name, even if Riddle – whoever he was – had won a special award for services to the school the year the Chamber had last opened. Especially since he had no legitimate way of knowing that fact. And so he listened to that warning voice in his mind, and kept quiet.

After finding nothing more about Riddle, they took Riddle's diary to Hermione. But alas, this didn't help any, either. Her only unique contribution was to use something like an eraser called a Revealer, which did nothing to the diary.

"There has to be __something__ written in it, hidden by magic somehow," Harry said in frustration. "I doubt someone would throw away a blank, fifty year old diary, when we know the Chamber of Secrets was opened 50 years ago, and Riddle got an award for special services to the school at the same time. It can't be a coincidence. Gah! If only we knew __why__ he got a special award."

"Could've been anything," said Ron. "Maybe he got thirty O.W.L.s or saved a teacher from the giant squid. Maybe he murdered Myrtle; that would've done everyone a favor."

"That's not funny, Ron. Don't joke about murder."

Ron turned red. "Sorry, mate."

For whatever reason, as Valentine's Day approached, there still hadn't been any attacks. The mandrakes were getting closer to growing old enough to be used for the restorative potion, and between these facts and the sunlight starting to shine again, the mood in the castle was lifting.

Harry was focusing so much on MAC and his schoolwork that the only thing he had time left for were his friends, which was largely Ron and Luna because the others were studying as well, and some of them had extra-curricular activities, too.

In fact, he was so focused on school and friends that he was taken completely by surprise when, the morning of Valentine's Day, the Great Hall was bedecked in lurid pink flowers, heart-shaped confetti raining from the ceiling. Harry cast a spell to make the confetti blow sideways just enough to avoid getting all over the food, and even then he had to blow some off of his bacon, trying the whole time he ate to not wonder where that confetti had been before.

"Hello, Harry," Luna said, sitting next to him and handing him a card. "Happy Valentine's Day."

"Happy Valentine's Day, Luna," Harry said, turning red. "I... well," he said, pulling something out of his pocket. "I got you something. Not a card, though. Should I have gotten a card, too?"

"Oh no, a gift is more than enough."

He handed her the hastily-wrapped gift, and looked at the card she'd given him as she unwrapped her present, knowing she would do so slowly and deliberately, careful not to rip the wrapping.

The card was bright yellow, painfully so in fact, with an even more painfully red-and-blue heart on the front, the blue and red swirling together in a ghostly fashion suggesting movement and making him feel sick to his stomach with something like vertigo. He hastily opened the card, only to find it was neon orange with bright blue lettering, which was even worse.

"Can you read this to me, Luna? It's painful to look at, and is making me ill."

"Oh," she said, looking sheepish. "Sorry. I guess I forget not everyone shares my love of interesting color combinations. The card says, 'A brightly colored Valentine's Day card for you, because you brighten my life.'"

"Ah. Cool. Just... please don't use any of these colors around me in future, especially not together."

"Sure thing, Harry. Ooooh!" She had opened the present at last, a silver friendship bracelet with 'H.J.P. & L.L.' inscribed on it.

"It's lovely, Harry," she said, giving him a hug. "I got you a gift as well, I just didn't bring it with me. I can bring it to the MAC classroom later."

"Okay. Before or after dinner?"

"Before, I think."

Luna opened her mouth to say something else, but then Lockhart addressed them all, and introduced a bunch of surly-looking dwarfs as his 'friendly, card-carrying cupids,' available for anyone to send Valentine's to others. He also mentioned love potions, which had Harry frowning disapprovingly.

All day long, Harry kept eyeing the 'cupids' warily, half expecting one of them to try to give him a Valentine, but they didn't, much to his relief. He made it all the way to his meeting with Luna without being bothered by any of them.

Luna's gift for him turned out to be a book about the old pre-Christian holidays, and their modern wizarding equivalents, with explanations about how they differed from both the oldest ways and from modern Christian ways. She also changed the colors on his card to soft, gentle colors that soothed his eyes, and changed the text to read 'A gently colored card for a gentle soul I feel comfortable with.'

When he got back to the Griffindor common room, he was still looking at his card.

"Oooh, Harry," Ron teased, "your girlfriend get you that? Can I see?"

Ron grabbed it, but Harry held on. They had a brief tug-of-war with it, and Harry got it back, but knocked a bottle of ink all over Riddle's diary in the process. Harry put the card away and cleaned the ink off the diary, noticing as he did that the ink was disappearing into the book. He looked at Ron, who was talking with Hermione and hadn't noticed. Harry put the diary in his pocket, and took his things up to his dorm.

He was about to try writing in the diary, when he saw a card on his bed. It was solid red with black ink. He opened it up curiously and looked at it. It was addressed to him, and read:

 _ _His eyes are as green as my envy,__

 _ _Which cuts to the quick like a sword;__

 _ _I wish he was mine, he's truly divine,__

 _ _The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.__

He blinked at these words, then turned the card all around, but there was no 'from' on it. He had a secret admirer, it seemed, and one who was in Griffindor, or knew someone in Griffindor willing to deliver it to his bed. But why speak of envy? He was single, after all. But this person seemed to think differently for some reason, and was upset about it. He wondered who it was, if only to ask why they thought he was dating someone, but ended up shrugging for now.

"One mystery at a time," he said, as he put the mysterious card in his trunk to look at later, and sat down with Riddle's diary open.

He first tried a blot of ink on the page, which was sucked completely into the book when he tried it. 'Successful first experiment,' he thought.

Next he tried writing in it. He wrote, "Hello?"

Then, oozing out of the page in his very own ink, came words.

" _ _Hello, stranger, my name is Tom Riddle. Who are you?__ "

'Yeah, not creepy at all,' he thought. But he was still intrigued. After all, for all he knew it could just be like a written-word version of one of the portraits, or a magical computer programmed to respond in certain ways.

"Hello, Tom Riddle. My name is Harry Potter," he wrote back.

" _ _Nice to meet you, Harry Potter. How did you come by my diary?__ "

"Someone tried flushing it down a toilet," he wrote in reply.

" _ _Good thing I recorded my memories into something more lasting than ink. But I always knew there would be those who would not want this diary read.__ "

"Why's that?" Harry asked it.

" _ _Because this diary holds memories of terrible things that people tried covering up. Events that happened in this very school, bringing shame to those who ran it.__ "

Scribbling so fast it was barely legible, Harry replied, "I'm there now, at Hogwarts. Terrible things are happening again. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?"

" _ _Of course I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it was a legend, that it did not exist. But this was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. I caught the person who'd opened the Chamber and he was expelled. But the headmaster, Professor Dippet, ashamed that such a thing had happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl had died in a freak accident. They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut. But I knew it could happen again. The monster lived on, and the one who had the power to release it was not imprisoned.__ "

Harry paused, thinking. 'So the victim was a girl. Interesting.'

Writing again, he said, "I had heard he wasn't imprisoned, but not who it was. Now there've been three attacks and nobody knows who's doing it. So who was it last time?"

" _ _I can show you, if you like__ ," came Riddle's reply. " _ _You don't have to take my word for it. I can take you inside my memory of the night when I caught him.__ "

This confused Harry; he'd never heard of such a thing before.

"You could do that?" he asked Riddle in hasty scrawl. "How?"

" _ _The how is not important, Harry, and would take too long to explain. May I show you?__ "

After hesitating for a moment, he wrote back, "Ok."

The book's pages moved like they were in a high wind, stopping sometime in June. A little screen appeared on the page, so small he had to bend closer to see it. And as he did, he tipped forward and fell __into__ the diary, landing after a rush of colors and shadows.

He looked around, and recognized the place as being the headmaster's office, but none of the signs of Dumbledore were there. Instead there was a man he'd never met before sitting behind the desk, a wizened, frail-looking wizard, bald except for a few wisps of white hair; he was reading a letter by candlelight.

Figuring he was in Riddle's memory but needing to make sure, he waved his hand in front of the man's face. There was, of course, no reaction, which confirmed his suspicions.

A moment later, there was a knock on the door, and a second confirmation appeared in the form of a tall, 16 year old boy wearing a Prefect badge, who knocked and was let into the office. From what he knew of Riddle, Riddle had been a Prefect and Head Boy.

"Ah, Riddle," said the headmaster, the final confirmation for Harry that he was in Riddle's memory.

"You wanted to see me, Professor Dippet?" said Riddle. Even Harry could tell he was nervous.

What followed was an exchange in which he found out that Riddle, a half-blood orphan, lived at a Muggle orphanage, which seemed strange to Harry. The Ministry was always so keen on keeping the two worlds separate, so it seemed odd they would lose track of a wizarding-world orphan. Especially when the boy had such a strange middle name as Marvolo.

They continued talking, about Tom's request to stay the summer at Hogwarts. Harry got the impression that the place was worse than the Dursleys, at least to Riddle. But the headmaster had to refuse, because of the "unpleasantness" with the Chamber of Secrets, which included the death of a girl.

"Sir — if the person was caught — if it all stopped —"

"What do you mean?" said Dippet with a squeak in his voice, sitting up in his chair. "Riddle, do you mean you know something about these attacks?"

"No, sir," said Riddle quickly.

But Harry was sure Riddle wasn't being honest, that he knew something but for whatever reason wasn't telling.

This professor 'Dippet' was disappointed that Riddle didn't appear to know anything, and dismissed him. Harry followed Riddle out the door, sure the boy was going to go bust the person responsible.

On their way to wherever it was Tom was going, they ran into a much younger Dumbledore, with auburn hair and beard. He was so astonished that he almost didn't notice that it was odd to ask a Prefect why they were wandering out in the halls. But then, he supposed, maybe it wasn't Riddle's night to patrol? Or had they forbidden Prefects from patrolling, with the Chamber being open, in order to protect the students?

His mind was taken from these thoughts as Riddle continued down the steps to the dungeons. Harry blinked at this. Was Riddle a Slytherin, like his friends Antigone, Angela, and Danzia? He scoured Riddle's uniform for any sign of a Slytherin badge or colors, and found none. Of course in a standard uniform there wouldn't be, but some students liked to add scarves, pins, or other embellishments with a House crest or in House colors, to show off their House pride. Riddle, it seemed, was not among the people who did that.

Instead of going to the Slytherin common room, Riddle went to the dungeon that Snape taught Potions in. Riddle closed the door almost completely shut, then peered through the crack of the almost-closed door, waiting.

After a very long time, in which Harry spent a long time wondering why Riddle didn't just fast-forward to the good part, they saw someone else skulking about out in the corridor, passing the dungeon where they hid. Once the person had passed, Riddle sneaked out into the hall again, Harry following him.

Five minutes they walked, until the other person opened a door and started talking.

"C'mon … gotta get yeh outta here. … C'mon now … in the box …"

'Hagrid?' Harry thought, recognizing the voice. He frowned at Riddle, confused. But they boy wasn't aware of him, of course. Instead, he jumped around the corner. Harry followed him, and sure enough there was a much younger – but almost as vast – Hagrid, crouching near an open door, a large box next to it.

What followed was Riddle confronting Hagrid about how the monster he was keeping in here had killed someone, and Hagrid protesting that it hadn't. Then, without much warning, Riddle cast a bright spell that hit the door behind Hagrid, and out came an enormous spider that nearly bowled him over. Harry found himself screaming at this, though only he could hear it.

Then the scene fell apart in a swirl of mist, and Harry was at his desk again, the still-open diary now blank.

Before he had had time to regain his breath, the dormitory door opened and Ron came in.

"There you are," he said. "Why you all sweaty, mate?"

Harry shook his head. He needed time to process things, to think, before he told anyone this story.

"I'll tell you later, Ron. Right now, I need to think."

The next day, he gathered his core friends – Ron, Hermione, Luna, Antigone, Angela, and Danzia – after classes and told them to meet him at the MAC classroom. When they got there, he had them help him set up privacy wards and sweep for magical 'bugs.' Only when he was certain the room was secure did he tell them about what Riddle's diary had shown them.

Of all of them, the ones who were surest Hagrid was innocent were his Slytherin friends.

"But the attacks must have stopped after Hagrid was expelled," Harry said, "or else Riddle wouldn't have gotten his award."

"I dunno, though, Harry," Antigone said. "He's facing the threat of going back to this orphanage, and just like that he knows who did it? Why didn't he tell someone sooner, if he thought it was Hagrid? Why wait? It just seems too suspicious to me."

"What, d'ya reckon Riddle's the culprit himself?" Ron asked. "He was a Head Boy and a Prefect, doesn't sound to me like the type that would go around setting monsters on people."

"Oh," Danzia said, her tone dripping with sarcasm, "I wasn't aware that you'd joined Hermione in thinking that all Authorities are pure and innocent souls who never do any wrong."

"Hey!" Hermione protested, weakly.

Danzia opened her mouth to speak, but Ron interrupted. "No I don't, but come on! He sounds like Percy, obsessed with rules and stuff."

"Then I repeat: why did he wait? Why not tell someone right away?"

"I dunno," Ron admitted. "Maybe he didn't have any proof? Or maybe he knew Hagrid, didn't want to think he could be responsible?"

"Ron," Danzia cut in before she could be interrupted again, "I dunno about you, but if I was the Heir of Slytherin, and if I was evil, what better way to disguise myself than to be a model student?"

"All we have is circumstantial evidence on Riddle," Harry said. "And we're agreed that's all Riddle had on Hagrid, so let's not go jumping to conclusions. Besides, he could've just made a mistake. Maybe he honestly thought it was Hagrid. Doesn't mean he can't still be innocent himself."

"So why did the attacks stop, then?"

"I dunno," Harry admitted. "Maybe the Heir knew that Riddle knew something about it, and got scared, and stopped?"

"But why not go back to it later? We know Hagrid didn't go to Azkaban, not for long anyway. He was expelled, and now he's the gamekeeper. The Heir could have started up again when Hagrid got his job."

"Yeah, but Hagrid was 13 when he got expelled, and Dumbledore wasn't headmaster then, that Dippet bloke was. He wasn't gonna get hired until he was 17 at least, and we don't even know when Dumbledore became headmaster, could've been ages later. The Heir prob'ly would've graduated by then, unless 'e was only 13 'imself when 'e did it," Ron countered.

"Something to research, then," Antigone said.

"I think we should ask Hagrid about it," Luna said serenely, as though they were discussing Hagrid's favorite flavor of Every-Flavor Beans.

"Oh, that'd be a cheerful visit," Ron said, rolling his eyes. " 'Hello, Hagrid. Tell us, have you been setting anything mad and hairy loose in the castle lately?' "

In the end, they decided that they would not say anything to Hagrid unless there was another attack, and as more and more days went by with no whisper from the disembodied voice, they became hopeful that they would never need to talk to him about why he had been expelled. It was now nearly four months since Justin and Nearly Headless Nick had been Petrified, and nearly everybody seemed to think that the attacker, whoever it was, had retired for good. What was more, the mandrakes were almost ready to be used.

"I feel bad for Colin and Justin, missing out on so much schooling because of this," Harry said one day.

"Oh, they'll probably be summer-schooled to get caught up. If not, we can help get them caught up," Hermione assured him.

The second years had something new to think about, though; classes for next year. They would be getting new classes next year, and would get to pick them. This was something that Harry and Hermione were taking very seriously, as it would affect their future career possibilities. Ron, however, wasn't taking it so seriously, and had picked Care of Magical Creatures and Divination because he thought they'd be easy. Harry, however, had picked Runes, Arithmancy, and Care of Magical Creatures. Hermione had given up trying to pick, and just signed up for all of them.

Even though he didn't care for Quidditch himself, Harry still made note of the fact that Griffindor would be playing Hufflepuff on Saturday. Everyone would be there, because Griffindor had been doing pretty well this year and was ahead on points. One more match, and they'd win the Quidditch cup for the first time in a long time.

On the night before the match, Neville Longbottom came to find Harry and told him someone had trashed their dorm, focusing on Harry's stuff. Harry followed Neville up, and sure enough, the place was a mess; desk drawers were pulled out, the sheets on the bed undone, torn pages from books everywhere, and the pockets of his robes were turned out; whoever it was had been looking for something.

Only when he'd repaired everything he could and thrown away or straightened up the things he couldn't did he realize Riddle's diary was gone, and quietly told Ron.

They went downstairs to tell Hermione, who was reading a book about ancient runes. She was aghast when they told her, and pointed out that only a Griffindor could have done it.

It was only later that night that he noticed that the mysterious red valentine's day card he'd gotten was intact, not even bent. His card from Luna, however, was torn into four pieces, and he had to repair it with his wand.

Deciding he'd rather be with people when the Heir was running amok, even if it had been quiet lately, Harry decided he would put his special earmuffs and sunglasses on, closing his eyes as he sat with his friends. He had the sunglasses perched on his forehead and the earmuffs around his neck as he and his friends gathered to go to the match.

On the way downstairs, Harry heard that monstrous voice again.

" _ _Kill this time__ … __let me rip__ … __tear__ …"

He shouted aloud and Ron and Hermione both jumped away from him in alarm.

"The voice!" said Harry, looking over his shoulder. "It's going to kill again! And now I'm absolutely certain it's Parseltongue."

Hermione and Ron both looked very worried. "Let's get out of the castle now," Ron said. Then he turned to Hermione. "You had any luck finding out about snake monsters?"

Hermione shook her head, her floofy hair threatening to pop out of the single large elastic holding it back. "It's like Nicolas Flamel all over again. The library here is such a mess! Especially compared to Muggle libraries. There's no card catalog, people keep putting the books back in the wrong places, half the books don't even have titles visible on the spines, and there are a bunch of books in languages I can't even identify. If I could find the right book, I'm sure I could find the monster, but finding it is the problem."

"Have you tried asking the librarian?"

She snorted. "Yes. About as helpful as dry rot, that one."

In the stands, Harry put his sunglasses on over his glasses as well, and closed his eyes. So it was that he had to be poked by Hermione to realize something had happened. Taking off his earmuffs and sunglasses, he realized McGonagall was informing them that the match was canceled, much to Oliver Wood's dismay, because someone else had been attacked. Harry looked around himself, and didn't see any of his friends missing. Still, he wondered who it was.

McGonagall came up to him.

"I'm glad to see you here, Mr. Potter," she said. "With this being the second attack you've got a solid alibi for, I can cross you off my list of suspects completely, which is a relief. I just wish we knew __who__ it was."

"Oh. Thanks?" he said, a little annoyed that he'd been on her list at all after being with the Hufflepuffs during the last attack.

"Professor," Danzia said, sounding panicked, "I don't know where Willem Stone is. Please, he wasn't the one attacked, was he?"

"No, Miss McCullough, Mr. Stone was not the one petrified. This attack was another double attack. One of the victims was a Ravenclaw Prefect by the name of Penelope Clearwater."

"Penelope!" Percy shouted, standing up and rushing away.

"The other victim was a Slytherin Prefect, Miss Maki Yasu."

Harry and the rest of his friends followed everyone else back into the castle. He was thinking about calling an emergency friend meeting in the MAC classroom, but soon McGonagall's voice rang throughout the school, informing them of new rules that included a 6 pm curfew, and teachers escorting kids through the halls.

While they were still together, Harry turned to Danzia and said, "We need to find out if we can get a look at these latest victims. Of the attacks so far, Colin had his eyes up to his camera at the time he was attacked, and I'm pretty sure Justin was looking at something or someone through Sir Nicolas. It may be important."

"Gotcha. I'll pass it on."

Then they went their separate ways to their own common rooms.

In the Griffindor common room, McGonagall was waiting, and went over the rules again, and also added that she thought the school would be shut down if the attacks didn't stop soon.

When she left, people started to talk.

"That's one Gryffindor down, not counting a Gryffindor ghost, one Ravenclaw, and one Hufflepuff," said the Weasley twins' friend Lee Jordan, counting on his fingers. "Haven't __any__ of the teachers noticed that the Slytherins are all safe? Isn't it __obvious__ all this stuff's coming from Slytherin? The __Heir__ of Slytherin, the __monster__ of Slytherin — why don't they just chuck all the Slytherins out?" he roared, to nods and scattered applause.

"Excuse me," Harry said, "but the other victim of this latest attack was a Slytherin Prefect, Maki Yasu."

That rather took the wind out of everyone's hate-sails.

"I don't know her blood status, having never met her before" he continued, "but there are half-blood and Muggle-born people in Slytherin, too. Not to mention blood traitors. They have to keep a low profile in Slytherin, but they exist."

There were some mumbles of shame at this, which pleased Harry, but he was already moving on to speak with Ron and Hermione, casting privacy spells before sitting down.

"We need to do something," Harry said. "The Heir is attacking Slytherins too, now. Whoever it is, is getting bolder."

"But what are we supposed to do?" Hermione asked.

"I think we need to talk with Hagrid. I know it's a slim lead, but it's all we have."

"Right," said Ron. "Well let's hope it works out better than our last lead."

"How, though? We're under curfew."

"We'll have to use my dad's old cloak again," Harry said.

"Just us, or do we invite anyone else along?"

"Well we don't have any way of communicating with Danzia and the others. I wish I'd thought to get them one or two magical two-way mirrors, but I didn't."

"What about Luna?"

"I dunno. We'd have to swing by Ravenclaw tower to do that, and that increases our odds of getting caught. So just the three of us, this time."

After waiting for everyone to go to bed, the three of them got under the invisibility cloak Harry had inherited from his father, and headed out into the castle. It was a lot more difficult this time than previous times, because there were far more adults in the corridors than usual, all watching out for signs of danger. Harry was glad, seeing this, that he'd decided not to invite Luna along.

They had a close call when they ran into somebody invisible just before the oak front doors, but the area was presently otherwise unoccupied.

"Ow, who's there?" Harry whispered.

"Harry? Is that you?"

"Antigone. Why am I surprised you're here?"

"Me and Angela are here, too," said Danzia's voice.

"Of course you are. Well, let's get out of here before someone catches us," Harry said, easing the large front doors open, then closed again when they all got out.

The six of them – three under the invisibility cloak, and three Disillusioned – made their way under the starry sky to Hagrid's hut. When they got there, the three under the cloak lifted it up so Hagrid would be able to see them, and knocked on his door.

The second they knocked, he flung the door open, crossbow in hand. Fang the boarhound barked at them.

"Oh," he said, lowering the weapon. "What're you three doin' here?"

"Six," said Harry. "Antigone, Danzia, and Angela are Dis-"

"Not 'nough room fer six of yeh an' me too. Jes you three, in. Rest of yeh, sorry, but you need ter go back."

"We'll stay out here," they said as Harry, Ron, and Hermione entered Hagrid's hut.

He closed the door behind them.

"What's that for?" Harry asked, referring to the crossbow.

"Nuthin. Jes bin expectin'... but never mind. Don't matter none. Sit down, I'll make tea."

But Hagrid was so nervous that he poured hot water into empty mugs, spilling most of it.

"Are you okay, Hagrid? Did you hear about those two Prefects?"

"Yeah, I heard, all righ'," he said, a slight break in his voice.

There was a loud knock at the door, making Hagrid drop some fruitcake. The three of them glanced at one another in near panic as Hagrid took up his crossbow again. Then they ducked under the invisibility cloak again, retreating into a corner.

When they were hidden, Hagrid opened his door. Standing there were two men: Dumbledore, and a man in a lime-green bowler hat. Ron gasped, whispering about that man being Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic.

Hagrid had gone pale and sweaty. He dropped into one of his chairs and looked from Dumbledore to Cornelius Fudge.

"Bad business, Hagrid," said Fudge in rather clipped tones. "Very bad business. Had to come. Three Muggle-borns and a Half-Blood petrified. Things've gone far enough. Ministry's got to act."

Hagrid protested, pleading his innocence in a terrified voice, begging not to be sent back to Azkaban. But despite Dumbledore's assurances of Hagrid's innocence, too, the Minister was adamant that he had to go back.

Then there was another knock on the door. Dumbledore answered it, and this time Harry gasped, recognizing Lucius Malfoy. Of course, Ron and Hermione knew him as well, both having been there at Flourish and Blotts when he and Mr. Weasley had fought.

The three of them watched as the elder Malfoy informed them that he'd come looking for Dumbledore, to show him that the School Governors had voted unanimously to boot him from his position, an action that Hagrid thought highly suspect. All the signatures were there, though, and despite even protestations from Fudge, Dumbledore had to step down.

"However," said Dumbledore, speaking very slowly and clearly so that none of them could miss a word, "you will find that I will only __truly__ have left this school when none here are loyal to me. You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it."

For a second, Harry was almost sure Dumbledore's eyes flickered toward the corner where the three of them were hidden.

Nor was that the only mysterious thing said. As they all left with Hagrid in tow, Hagrid paused and gave a cryptic message about following the spiders, as well as saying someone would need to feed Fang.

The door banged shut and Ron pulled off the Invisibility Cloak.

"We're in trouble now," he said hoarsely. "No Dumbledore. They might as well close the school tonight. There'll be an attack a day with him gone."

Fang started howling, scratching at the closed door.

Harry looked out the window very carefully, watching the three adults heading for the front gates. When they were gone, there was a knock at the door. He opened the door and let his three Slytherin friends inside.

"What's going on? Where's Hagrid going?" Angela asked.

Harry, Hermione, and Ron took turns recounting what they'd witnessed. The three girls echoed Ron's earlier sentiment about the results of Dumbledore's dismissal.

"So now what?"

"For now, we go back."

And go back is exactly what they did, all of them making it safely back without getting caught.

End note 1: On a whim, I looked for pictures of gray-eyed Indian women, and even though I knew it was possible, I was pleased to see proof that there really __are__ people who look like Antigone. I mean, I'd seen blue eyed Indian people before, and gray eyes are just a shade of blue eyes, but still cool to have proof.

End note 2: I Googled "painful color combinations" as research for this chapter, and now I regret it because I react to them the same way this fic's Harry does.

End note 3: I didn't know who the Slytherin Prefects for this year were, so I made a (this time minor) OC for the second victim of the second double attack. She is a half-blood, secretly a blood traitor but pretends to be a blood purist. She is in the same year as Penelope and Percy.


	7. Chapter 7

Harry Potter and the Trouble With Neurotypicals: Book Two.

Or, "Aspie Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

Note: I do not own this. J. K. Rowling does. This is just fan fiction. No money is being made.

Note 2: There may be a few bits and pieces lifted word-for-word from the canon material. I tried to do that as little as possible, though.

Chapter 7: Riddle Me That

Dumbledore's removal from the school only made everyone's fear increase, because if Dumbledore was the only one Voldemort feared, how could they think the Heir of Slytherin would be any different? The Heir would have free reign now, or at least freer reign.

His removal also complicated other matters. Wizard Studies class was canceled for the time being, becoming a free study period, but with as paranoid as all the teachers were, everyone who'd been taking the class ended up in their dorm rooms during that period.

Luckily, though, McGonagall and Flitwick kept up the Dueling Club, despite the 6 o'clock curfew. At 7 PM, when it was over, they would escort everyone to their respective dorms, which let Harry, Ron, and Hermione see where the Hufflepuff dorms were at last: near the kitchens.

MAC was canceled for the foreseeable future, of course. This gave them very little time around Draco now. Draco's standing in Slytherin wasn't increasing any, though, as he kept complaining loudly about his father's "stupid decision" to remove Dumbledore.

"Yes, the man's eccentric," they heard him saying in class once, "but he defeated Grindlewald in a duel, and he was the only one You-Know-Who feared. The Heir will be afraid of him too, I've no doubt. I've already sent an owl to father about his idiotic decision, but I haven't gotten a reply back."

Another time, they heard him worrying aloud that he thought his father couldn't have heard yet about Draco's current standing in Slytherin, or that the Heir was attacking Slytherins now, too.

"And I'm a blood traitor now! I've been going to MAC, questioning father's ideology. I'm terrified to leave my dorm! I'm terrified to stay in my dorm, too; the Heir is surely a Slytherin, after all. I'm bound to be next! I explained all this in my letter to father; I wish he would hurry and write back."

"Draco, try not to worry too much," Harry told him. "Danzia, Willem, Antigone, and Angela are there with you, too. Power in numbers, and all that."

Draco nodded, but didn't look very convinced.

They were having no luck figuring out what the monster was, either. Between the disorganized library and the librarian's unhelpfulness, it was still an uphill battle trying to figure that out. Nor was looking for the spiders helping, as they all seemed to have scarpered already.

In fact, it wasn't until Herbology class one day that Harry noticed some spiders fleeing, making a beeline for the Forbidden Forest. He pointed this out to Ron and Hermione.

"Forbidden Forest, right," Ron said. "But with the teachers taking us from class to class now, and the curfew, there's no way we'll be able to get away!"

"Not without my father's cloak, anyway," Harry said.

Hermione twisted her mouth uncertainly. "I see your point, Harry," she said, "But that didn't go so well last time, remember? And what about that giant spider that was in Hagrid's box, in the vision Riddle showed you? It could be out there."

"I think that's why Hagrid wants us to go there, to talk with it."

Ron's eyes bugged out. "No way! No, I am not going to go talk with a giant talking spider!"

"Hermione and I will be there, too, Ron."

"Yeah, but I came across something in one of those creature books the other day, about giant spiders called acromantulas. If that's what Hagrid had in that box, they grow to the size of cart horses and eat humans!"

"Well, maybe. But there's good things in there, too. Like the centaurs."

Ron snorted. "I really doubt the centaurs and an acromantula are gonna live in the same parts of the forest."

"Yeah, but they have weapons. And anyway, there's only one acromantula."

"That we know of," Ron snapped. "You know Hagrid as well as I do. I wouldn't put it past him to have thought his pet giant spider was lonely, and gotten it a mate."

"Hermione, do you know any spells against acromantulas?"

" _Arania Exumai_ ," she said. "Not sure how effective it is, though."

"Well if we're going into the Forest, we can take Fang with us," Ron said.

"Fang is a coward though, remember?" Harry answered. "He'd be useless."

"Oh, right."

They had to stop talking, then, because class was over, and Professor Sprout had to escort them to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Harry used the time to think about the planned trip into the Forest.

"Don't worry too much, Harry," Ron said when they sat down. "If we can somehow get your Slytherin friends in there with us, they'll know some more effective spells, since they're older."

"I suppose so. Not sure how we're going to get a message to them, though."

"If we survive this year, you should get some two-way mirrors or something from Diagon Alley."

Harry nodded to this.

Just then, Professor Lockhart came in, looking for all the world like the world couldn't be more beautiful, as opposed to everyone else's fear. Harry barely listened as he expressed his certainty that Hagrid was the culprit; he didn't feel like getting in trouble for hexing a teacher. Not even one as idiotic as Lockhart. As it was, Harry had to stop Ron blabbing things they shouldn't be able to know, by kicking him under the desk.

At some point during class, Harry made a decision, and scrawled a pair of notes to Ron and Hermione, saying 'Let's do it tonight.'

Ron looked grim, but determined. Hermione looked unsure. She scribbled a note on the other side and passed it back to him. The note said, 'But the Slytherins?'

Grabbing another piece of parchment, he sent back another reply, which said, 'I'll give them a note at dinnertime.'

After reading the note, she nodded.

At dinnertime, Harry went over to Antigone, and passed her a note. Well, really it was more of a letter. He'd taken the precaution of writing most of it in invisible ink, too. If a teacher looked at it, it was just a short note saying he missed them, hoped the Heir problem would be solved soon so they could restart MAC, and contained a coded message (without being obvious) that instructed her to use a Revealer on the other side of the page. He hoped she would figure it out. Antigone being a quintessential Slytherin, it was hard to doubt she'd miss it, but he still worried.

Since it was so hard to get away from the common room these days, being as they had nowhere else to go because of the curfew, Harry ended up sitting on his cloak all night long, playing games with people to pass the time. But the place was so crowded and noisy, especially with games like Exploding Snap, that he started getting a headache after a couple hours, and after taking a headache cure, he put his earmuffs on and took to reading a Defense book of his instead.

Finally, though, the three of them were the last people in the common room, so they seized on the opportunity to slip away under the invisibility cloak and out the portrait hole. But getting through the hallways was difficult, as they were full of teachers and Prefects patrolling. While sensible, it was annoying, and it took almost a whole hour to slowly make their way out the front doors, where to nobody's surprise they bumped into Antigone, Angela, and Danzia, who were Disillusioned.

"Everyone here?" Harry whispered outside the door.

They answered in the affirmative, so he told them where they were going.

When they got into the Forbidden Forest, Harry and the other two Griffindors took off the cloak, and the three Slytherin girls undid their Disillusionment Charms so they could see each other as they followed the spiders. Then they all lit their wands - except for Ron, who feared his might explode if he did - and followed the little trail of arachnids.

By the light of five wands, they went deeper and deeper into the Forest, until they had to leave the forest path – something Hagrid had warned them not to do, but he'd also told them to follow the spiders. Reluctantly, the six of them continued through the ever-darkening forest after the thin trail of arachnids.

They walked for over an hour, according to Danzia's wristwatch, their robes getting snagged frequently on the thickening brush. Several times they had to stop for minutes at a time, either to find the spiders again, or to find a way past an especially thick patch of brambles or bushes that the spiders were just blithely going through or over, but every time they managed to find their little eight-legged leaders again. After a while, they noticed that the ground seemed to be sloping downward, though the trees were as thick as ever.

Antigone stopped them all with a raised arm and a whispered admonition. She'd heard something, and needed to listen.

"What is it?" Ron whimpered, clutching Hermione's arm.

Harry heard it too. Something large was coming through the thick woods, breaking branches as it moved through the brush.

"Oh, no," said Ron. "Oh, no, oh, no, oh —"

"Shut up," said Harry frantically. "It'll hear you."

The darkness seemed to be pressing on their eyeballs as they stood, terrified, waiting. But the sound was gone.

"We've lost the trail," Antigone said quietly, searching the ground for spiders.

The others made to look with her, except for Harry, who was looking at Ron. Ron's face had gone pale as death, and he was staring at a point 10 feet above the forest floor, right behind Harry. It was plain that Ron was very close to pissing himself in terror.

With a sudden clicking noise, Harry found himself being hoisted into the air, hanging facedown. Struggling, terrified, hearing more horrible clicking, he saw the legs of Ron and a few others being hoisted as well, while others were making a lot of terrified noise, not sure what was going on. Then he saw only darkness as whatever had him walked very fast away from the lights of the wands and into a hollow that had been cleared of trees. He had brief glimpses of giant hairy spider legs, and a massive structure made of webbing, and starlight overhead. They had found the acromantulas, then; Ron had been right, there was more than one. Who knew how many there were, after all these decades?

Craning his neck, he got a better image of the hollow, and what he saw made him want to wet himself. Hundreds of massive spiders, large as cart horses, as well as myriad other smaller spiders, all swarming over a massive area. From what he could tell, he wouldn't have been surprised if there'd been 1000 or more of the horrible acromantulas living there, it was like a small domed city made of webbing.

What was worse, dozens – nay, scores – of the monsters were gathering around, clicking in excitement at Harry and whoever else had been caught. They released him and Ron, and he also saw Hermione at his other side. He felt mildly relieved, as it looked like there'd only been three of the giant spiders that found them, unless there were others that were being held up. He hoped that the three Slytherin girls, at least, had escaped. But at the same time, he was annoyed that they hadn't tried to fight the things, as far as he could remember from the chaos that the monsters had sown.

He took a better look at his two Griffindor friends. Ron's eyes were popping, his mouth in a silent scream, his whole body like a statue, except that he was quivering in terror. Hermione, too, looked utterly terrified, covering her eyes and weeping silently. Harry felt much the same; he wondered how bad he looked.

Harry forced himself to calm down a little, trying to think of what spells he could use to get out of this situation, as this clearly had been a horrible idea. But his thoughts were interrupted as he realized the spiders were speaking, saying over and over again the word "Aragog." It had been hard to tell at first, because they clicked their pincers whenever they spoke.

And from the middle of the misty, domed web, a spider the size of a small elephant emerged, very slowly. There was gray in the black of his body and legs, and each of the eyes on his ugly, pincered head was milky white. He was blind. He was clearly very old, too, which made Harry wonder if this was Hagrid's original pet, the one from the vision.

"What is it?" the old spider said, clicking his pincers rapidly.

"Humans," clicked the spider that had been carrying Harry.

"Is it Hagrid?" said Aragog, moving closer, his eight milky eyes wandering vaguely.

"Strangers," clicked the spider who had brought Ron.

"Kill them," clicked Aragog fretfully. "I was sleeping. …"

"We're friends of Hagrid's," Harry shouted. His heart seemed to have left his chest to pound in his throat.

 _Click, click, click_ went the pincers of the spiders all around the hollow.

Aragog paused.

"Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before," he said slowly.

"Hagrid's in trouble," said Harry, breathing very fast. "That's why we've come."

"In trouble?" said the aged spider, and Harry thought he heard concern beneath the clicking pincers. "But why has he sent you?"

Unable to trust himself to stand, he stayed seated, speaking as calmly as he could.

"They think he's the Heir of Slytherin. They think he's setting a monster on students, so they took him to Azkaban."

"But that was years ago," said Aragog fretfully. "Years and years ago. I remember it well. That's why they made him leave the school. They believed that _I_ was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free."

"So it wasn't you?"

"I? No, I was not the monster they sought. Hagrid got me as an egg from a distant land. I never saw anything in the castle except for the box he kept me in until I had to escape, the night I was discovered."

"You never attacked anyone?"

"Never," croaked the old spider. "It would have been my instinct, but out of respect for Hagrid, I never harmed a human. The body of the girl who was killed was discovered in a bathroom. I never saw any part of the castle but the cupboard in which I grew up. Our kind like the dark and the quiet. …"

"So... what _did_ kill that girl?"

"We do not speak of it!" Aragog shouted to a backdrop of hundreds of angry clicks. "The thing that lives in the castle," said Aragog, "is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others. Well do I remember how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go, when I sensed the beast moving about the school. But do not ask me to speak more of it!"

Harry nodded, sensing he'd gotten all he could out of the spider, and beginning to plan an escape. But just in case it was reasonable, he spoke again.

"Thanks for that. We'll just go back now and tell the teachers that, so Hagrid can be released."

"Go?" said Aragog slowly. "I think not."

"So you don't want Hagrid released?"

Aragog paused, thinking.

"It matters not, one way or another," the blind spider said. "I _do_ care for Hagrid, but I have my family to care for now. There are many mouths to feed here in our hollow, and while I myself do not attack humans for Hagrid's sake, and my children do not harm Hagrid on my command, I cannot deny my sons and daughters fresh meat when it wanders so willingly into our midst. So farewell, friends of Hagrid."

Harry stood up suddenly with his wand and shouted, " _Arania Exumai_!" at the nearest spiders. A burst of light hit the thing, but hardly did anything to the spider. The light itself had far more effect, as the spiders flinched away from it.

"LUMOS MAXIMA!" he shouted, blinding the spiders, causing an uproar of furious clicks.

"Dobby! Netty!" he said, as he grabbed Ron and Hermione.

The two house elves appeared with a loud crack, confused at first. They barely had time to regard the spiders with terror before Harry forced his friends' hands into the elves' hands and shouted, "GO! BACK TO THE CASTLE! TAKE THEM WITH YOU!"

With a loud crack, the four of them vanished, leaving Harry alone with the monsters. Hermione might have been useful, if she hadn't been nearly as catatonic as Ron had been, so he'd gotten them to safety instead.

He ran, shooting more bursts of light after him, but it was hopeless; the spiders were so fast that they would surely catch him at any moment, light or no light.

But then, he saw flashes of variously colored lights up ahead, and then heard shouts. He recognized the voices as Antigone, Angela, and Danzia. They hadn't run away after all, but were instead shooting various spells and hexes at nearby spiders.

Getting close enough for him to see her, Antigone jumped out and shot several _bombarda_ spells at the nearest spiders, causing fiery explosions that not only made charbroiled, exploded spider guts fly everywhere, but also made bright lights. Harry did the same, using the spell for the first time ever. It didn't work the first couple times he tried, but on the third time he got it.

Danzia and Angela arrived, too, and he heard words like _defodio_ , _confringo_ , and _expulso_ , which all had various destructive effects on the attacking spiders. He even saw one of them, with a shouted ' _vocabo_ _acidum,_ ' send a torrent of burning acid at the acromantulas, resulting in a lot of inhuman screams of agony.

All these and more, poorly aimed because they were all running for their lives and firing blindly behind them, slowed down the giant spiders enough for Harry to call back Netty and Dobby. Dobby took Angela's and Antigone's robes, Netty took Harry's free hand, and they all Disapparated away, appearing in an unfamiliar dorm room with a view of the underside of the lake.

Harry collapsed, panting with exhaustion, trying to calm down his racing heart. They were bloody lucky to be alive. If he hadn't thought to call for the two elves, they'd probably be dead now.

"Where are we?" he asked when he finally calmed down enough to speak.

"This is our dorm room," Antigone responded. "Angela's and mine."

Dobby stood up on shaking legs, but Netty was still on the floor, crying and shaking. Dobby disappeared with a crack, and Harry didn't blame him. But a few minutes later, he reappeared, and handed Harry something, which he took in bewilderment.

"Dobby is finding Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, Sir," the elf said by way of explanation.

"Thank you, Dobby. And Dobby, Netty, thank you both for saving our lives."

"You is most welcome, Harry Potter sir," said Dobby proudly. Netty merely nodded.

"Where are the others, Dobby?"

"Dobby is putting the two Griffindors back in Griffindor common room, Sir. The other Slytherin girl-"

Danzia burst into the room then, hugging Dobby thankfully.

"Is here, Sir," Dobby explained unneccessarily.

She let go of Dobby, and moved on to hugging Netty. Free of her squeezing embrace, Dobby cleared his throat.

"So," he said, "is Harry Potter wanting Dobby to take him back to the Griffindor common room?"

"Let me check something first. Antigone? Angela? You two okay?"

Angela nodded, but said nothing. She was crying, and holding her knees. Antigone nodded as well.

"And you, Danzia?"

"I may have nightmares about giant spiders for the next few months, but yeah, I'm fine."

"Good. I better go reassure the others. Dobby, I'm ready."

He took the elf's hand. No sooner had they reappeared in Griffindor Common Room than Hermione tackled him with a crushing bear hug, that Ron soon joined.

"Oh thank God you're alright! I was afraid you'd been eaten! What took you so long? How'd you get out of there?"

"Well I probably wouldn't have escaped if not for Danzia and the others showing up, helping me slow down the acromantulas with various exploding spells and other destructive spells and curses, which bought time for Dobby and Netty to come back for us. They took us to Antigone's dorm room, and we had to recover a little before-"

Ron had spotted Dobby, and was giving the little elf a giant hug. Hermione, seeing this, joined in as well. The two Griffindors praised Dobby's bravery and help, which made the little elf grin ecstatically. Then Harry called Netty, and she appeared, looking like she was recovering, and they all praised her, too, before finally dismissing the two elves.

Harry and Ron had a hard time getting to sleep that night, understandably. It took over an hour of whispered conversation between the two friends before they started to drift off at last. But Harry sat up like a bolt just before falling asleep, and woke Ron up to tell him what he'd figured out.

Ron awoke with a yelp, looking frantically around for the danger, before seeing Harry just wanted to talk with him again.

"Ron — that girl who died. Aragog said she was found in a bathroom," said Harry, ignoring Neville's snuffling snores from the corner. "What if she never left the bathroom? What if she's still there?"

Ron rubbed his eyes, frowning through the moonlight. And then he understood, too.

"You _don't_ think — not _Moaning Myrtle_?"

After relaying to Hermione the revelation about Moaning Myrtle being the girl who died, she gasped and slapped her own face, clearly thinking she should have put it together herself already. It was only a shame that not even Hermione could get away with using that bathroom anymore, what with it being the site of the first attack and the words in red on the wall still being stuck there, Filch unable to clean them off.

But something happened in Transfiguration that drove the Chamber out of the minds of everyone, for they found they were still having exams. The only person, to Harry's knowledge, who didn't look surprised by this was Hermione, and even she looked like she thought it might not be a great idea in the current climate. Even workaholic Hermione would doubtless find it hard to study while worrying about some giant monster attacking people at any time.

Ron took it worst of all, though; he looked as though he'd just been told he had to go and live in the Forbidden Forest.

"Can you imagine me taking exams with this?" he asked Harry, holding up his wand, which had just started whistling loudly.

"If you let me buy you a new wand via owl order, it might arrive in time."

"Maybe. But I dunno about that, either. 'The wand chooses the wizard,' remember? How can I trust some random wand that didn't pick me?"

"The wand you have now is hand-me-down, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but that's different. Family wands tend to be much more likely to accept new users from the same family. And even so, this one took me a few months to get the hang of. Everyone but me and Neville got the hang of theirs faster."

Harry didn't know what to say to this.

Three days before their first exam, though, McGonagall announced some happy news: the mandrakes were almost ready to be made into a restorative draught, so they'd soon be finding out who the culprit was.

Harry glanced at the Slytherin table, and saw Draco looking relieved, and talking with Danzia.

"It won't matter that we never asked Myrtle, then!" Ron said to Harry and Hermione during dinner. "I feel bad for the kids that missed most of the year, though; how're they gonna pass exams when they've missed so much?"

"Probably they'll be tutored to get caught up," Hermione mused.

Just then, Ginny came up to Harry, looking very nervous.

"I have to tell you something," she said to him. But she hesitated, looking worried and reluctant.

"Does this have something to do with the Chamber of Secrets?" he asked.

Before she could answer, Percy Weasley appeared, looking tired and wan.

"If you've finished eating, I'll take that seat, Ginny. I'm starving, I've only just come off patrol duty."

Ginny jumped up as though her chair had just been electrified, gave Percy a fleeting, frightened look, and scampered away. Harry rushed after her while Ron and Hermione berated Percy for his timing, but she disappeared in the crowded room, and he lost track of her. He continued trying to find her, asking people if they'd seen her. But she'd made a clean getaway. Given that the teachers were ushering them through the halls for everything, this worried him more than anything. He headed up to the staff table to talk with McGonagall.

"Professor McGonagall?"

"What is it, Potter? We're trying to eat dinner."

"I know that, but I can't find Ginny Weasley anywhere. She was about to tell me something that I think was about the Chamber of Secrets, given her nervousness, but Percy scared her off, and she vanished into the crowd. I've been looking for several minutes, but nobody's seen her."

McGonagall frowned a little. "She's probably still in the room, Potter. Nobody's allowed out into the halls without a teacher escort, you know."

"I know, but I have an instinct that she's given whoever's at the door the slip."

"You think she gave Professor Snape the slip?"

"If that's who's at the doors, then yes."

"Whatever for?"

"It's hard to explain, but I think she might know who the Heir of Slytherin is. Or she at least saw somebody or something suspicious. I got that vibe from her, before she got spooked."

The stern older woman sighed. "I'll have the Prefects look for her, then."

"You might want to exclude Percy from that, since he spooked her."

"Yes, yes, Mr. Potter, I'll do that. Students shouldn't be wandering about, and if he's the reason for it, we can't chance her running away from him again."

Harry nodded. She dismissed him, and he went back to Ron and Hermione to tell them what had happened.

Thankfully, because they still had exams to study for, Hermione was able to convince McGonagall to escort the Griffindors to the library after lunch one day. They wouldn't be able to stay long, because of the curfew, but it gave the three of them the chance to check out a bunch more creature books to look through for a giant snake monster when they returned to the common room. McGonagall gave the three of them a weird look when she saw they were all carrying so many books they could barely see where they were going, but said nothing as she escorted them back.

The three of them had been there for less than an hour going through their books when Hermione stumbled on the right creature.

"Harry! Ron!" she whispered excitedly at them. "I found it!"

She pointed to the page in the book she had open, and Harry got there first, reading:

 _Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it._

"Wow, Hermione! I think you're right. It all fits! A giant snake, which explains how I can understand it, we knew that much already."

"And you said you thought people were seeing it through things, right?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah. Colin through his camera, and Justin through Nick. But since Nick is already dead, he can't die. I don't know about the last one, though."

"I do," Hermione said. "I asked around, and the two Prefect girls who were attacked had been found with a mirror. From what I've heard of the two of them, the Slytherin Prefect was probably checking her hair, and Penelope Clearwater may also have been looking at the mirror, too."

Ron's jaw had dropped.

"And Mrs. Norris?" he whispered eagerly.

"The water," Harry and Hermione said in stereo. Harry let Hermione continue.

"Mrs. Norris saw the basilisk's reflection in the water, Ron," she finished. "Myrtle's bathroom was flooding, remember?"

"Oh yeah."

"'The crowing of the rooster is fatal to it,'" Harry read. "And Hagrid said his roosters had been killed. The Heir had to get them out of the way. Then 'spiders flee before it.' Even Aragog and the other acromantulas were terrified of this thing, like it was a monster You-Know-Who."

"But how's the basilisk been getting around the place?" said Ron. "A giant snake, someone would've seen it?"

"Pipes," said Hermione with a smirk.

"It's been using the plumbing? Which is why Harry can hear it in the walls, and we didn't; Parseltongue sounds like hissing."

"This means," said Harry, "I can't be the only Parselmouth in the school. The Heir of Slytherin's one, too. That's how he's been controlling the basilisk."

"Wait, Harry. Wasn't You-Know-Who a Parselmouth, too?" Hermione asked.

"So?"

"Well he might be old enough. Maybe he was in school the same time Tom Riddle was?"

"Damn. Wish I'd thought of that before. I could've asked Tom if he knew of any ugly snake-looking guys in school."

"I doubt he looked like that in school, Harry. Guy without a nose would kinda stand out, right? Hard to think Riddle would suspect Hagrid when someone like that was about. So if it _was_ You-Know-Who, then he could've looked like anything! Hell, he could be this Tom Riddle bloke for all we know. He could've set Hagrid up as a fall guy. You said Riddle didn't want to go back to that orphanage, right? He hears his plot is going to get him sent back there, he sets somebody up to take the blame so he can stay at Hogwarts."

"But Riddle is handsome!"

"Think that matters? Dad said something once about dark magic often deforming the people who used it. He could've been handsome in his youth, but then the dark magic took his nose away, among other deformities, from what I've heard of him."

"Could it really be Tom Riddle?" Harry asked Hermione.

"How should I know? But Ron might be right. I've never heard of a diary acting like that before. I mean, it could just be something similar to a pensieve – a sort of stone bowl to watch memories from. But, like, combined with something like a portrait, in writing? And if so, it would have the self awareness and memories to reopen the Chamber."

"Yeah!" Ron said. "And it's really suspicious it just showed up here at the right time, just as the Chamber was open, to conveniently point the finger at Hagrid again."

"I don't know," Harry said, uncertain. "I got a malevolent vibe from You-Know-Who the first time, but Riddle seemed alright. Charming, even."

"Well, Harry, I've heard serial killers are often charming. And You-Know-Who is basically a power-hungry, magical serial killer."

"But the Voldemort I met by the Mirror of Erised wasn't charming. I think he was trying to be, but failing miserably. He was about as charming as something pale and slimy under a stone."

"Yeah, Harry, but there were no attacks when you had the thing with you, and they started up again when it got nicked."

"But if the diary is just a written-word portrait, how is it acting?"

"It must be using somebody," Hermione said. "Using some living human as an accomplice, you know? It wouldn't be able to act on its own, if it's like a portrait."

"But doesn't that kinda leave us at square one? We have no idea who it's using, who the accomplice is. Unless..."

"Unless what, Harry?" Ron said.

"No, it couldn't be. Too much of a coincidence, two DADA teachers in a row being evil. But Quirrell pretended to be a stuttering coward; Lockhart could be pretending to be a total idiot."

"What're we going to do?" said Ron, whose eyes were flashing. "Should we go straight to McGonagall?"

"Let's go to the staffroom," said Harry, jumping up. "She'll be there in ten minutes. It's nearly time for the next class."

They ran out the portrait hole and over to the staff room. Not wanting to be discovered hanging around in a corridor without an escort, the three of them went straight into the deserted staffroom. It was a large, paneled room full of dark, wooden chairs. The three Griffindors paced around it, too excited to sit down.

But the bell to signal the next class never came.

Instead, echoing through the corridors came Professor McGonagall's voice, magically magnified.

" _All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staffroom. Immediately, please._ "

"Not another attack, surely?" Hermione fretted.

"What'll we do?" said Ron, aghast. "Go back to the dormitory?"

"No," said Harry, glancing around. There was an ugly sort of wardrobe to his left, full of the teachers' cloaks. "In here. Let's hear what it's all about. Then we can tell them what we've found out."

"I don't know about this, Harry," Hermione said. "We might—"

"If we get in trouble, so what? We need to get this information to McGonagall, and I can't think of another way."

Sighing with resignation, Hermione nodded. They hid themselves inside the wardrobe, which was a tight fit for three second year students, listened to the rumbling of hundreds of people moving overhead, before the staffroom door banged open. From between the musty folds of the cloaks, they watched the teachers filtering into the room. Some of them were looking puzzled, others downright scared. Then Professor McGonagall arrived.

From what they witnessed, there was indeed another attack, but this one was different. Nobody had been found. Instead, another message had been left by the Heir of Slytherin, saying 'Her body will rot in the chamber forever.' And what was worse, the student who had been abducted was Ginny Weasley. Ron slid to the bottom of the wardrobe in despair, and Hermione – barely visible in the dark – looked like she was trying very hard not to cry. It was hard, just then, but Harry continued listening, and there was talk about closing the school and sending the students home.

Then Lockhart came into the room, and he was beaming, clearly with no idea what was going on. This didn't make him any less a suspect in Harry's mind.

"So sorry — dozed off — what have I missed?"

He didn't seem to notice that the other teachers were looking at him with something remarkably like hatred. Snape stepped forward.

"Just the man," he said. "The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last."

The look that took over Lockhart's face almost made Harry want to laugh, as his beauty and happiness melted into ugly cowardice, and a weak chin. The rest of the conversation didn't fare much better for the man, as he got backed into a corner, metaphorically speaking. He had no choice but to agree to going after the monster, leaving the room quickly, looking utterly terrified.

"Right," said Professor McGonagall, whose nostrils were flared, "that's got _him_ out from under our feet. The Heads of Houses should go and inform their students what has happened. Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them home first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you please make sure no students have been left outside their dormitories."

The teachers rose and left, one by one.

How the three of them got back to the common room after that, they could never remember, they were all so dejected and terrified about Ginny being taken. They weren't alone, either; everyone in Griffindor was quiet for once, all of them feeling the same thing.

No afternoon ever lasted as long as that one, nor had Gryffindor Tower ever been so crowded, yet so quiet. Near sunset, Fred and George went up to bed, unable to sit there any longer.

"She knew something," said Ron, speaking for the first time since they had entered the wardrobe in the staffroom. "That's why she was taken. You missed this when you looked for Ginny the other day, Harry, but I thought she'd seen Percy doing something embarrassing, and told him as much. But now it's clear I was wrong. It wasn't some stupid thing about Percy at all. She'd found out something about the Chamber of Secrets. That must be why she was —" Ron rubbed his eyes frantically. "I mean, she's a pureblood. There can't be any other reason."

Harry looked at Ron and Hermione, and came to a decision.

"I think she's still alive. We have to go find her. We have to stop Lockhart, if it's him."

"You think it's him? He looked like a coward, when the teachers sent him after Ginny."

"Could be an act. He's convinced people all over the world to buy his stupid books, hasn't he?"

"Do you really think he's that clever?"

"After Quirrell, I won't dismiss the possibility so easily."

"Good point. You coming too, Hermione?"

"Of course I am. You two in the Chamber alone? I shudder to think. But let's stop at Lockhart's office first, just in case you're wrong about him."

"Alright, then," Harry agreed, standing up.

Getting out of there was absurdly easy; nobody so much as looked at them as they left, all of them being lost in worry for Ginny. And the halls, despite everything, were almost deserted. He supposed the teachers were busy with plans to get the students out of there.

As they made their way to Lockhart's office, Harry's heart pained him, his mind having suddenly thought about Luna for the first time in days or longer, given everything that was going on. He made a mental note to go straight to her if he survived this, and hoped she was safe.

There was a flurry of activity in Lockhart's office, given all the noise. Noise that stopped suddenly the moment they knocked. The door opened a crack and they saw one of his blue eyes peer out at them.

"Oh, Misters Potter and Weasley, and Ms. Granger," he said, opening the door a bit wider. "I'm rather busy at the moment, so please be quick."

Harry turned his wand on the bewildered man.

"Tell the truth now," Harry demanded, "are you the Heir of Slytherin?"

After a moment of gaping open-mouthed at Harry in bewilderment, Lockhart said, "Me? Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award, the Heir of Slytherin? Madness! Sheer lunacy! Your brain must be going, young man."

"Yeah, okay, there's that, but our last DADA teacher was secretly evil, too. Pretended to be a coward. You say you've done all this stuff, but either you're a lying imbecile, or you're pretending to be a lying imbecile. Either way, I think it would be best if we accompany you to the Chamber of Secrets."

The door suddenly closed, but Harry hit it with _bombarda,_ blasting it to splinters. His friends stared at him in shock, but followed Harry inside, where Lockhart was freaking out and almost crying.

The room was almost completely stripped. Luggage lay open, as well. The man had clearly been packing.

"Going somewhere?" Harry asked.

"Er, well, yes," said Lockhart, ripping a life-size poster of himself from the back of the door as he spoke and starting to roll it up. "Urgent call — unavoidable — got to go —"

"What about Ron's sister?" Hermione demanded.

"Well, as to that — most unfortunate —" said Lockhart, avoiding their eyes as he wrenched open a drawer and started emptying the contents into a bag. "No one regrets more than I —"

"You're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher!" said Hermione. "You can't go now! Not with all the Dark stuff going on here!"

"Well — I must say — when I took the job —" Lockhart muttered, now piling socks on top of his robes. "nothing in the job description — didn't expect —"

"You mean you're _running away_?" said Ron disbelievingly. "After all that stuff you did in your books —"

"Books can be misleading," said Lockhart delicately.

"You wrote them!" Ron shouted.

"My dear boy," said Lockhart, straightening up and frowning at Harry. "Do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think _I'd_ done all those things. No one wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a hairy chin. I mean, come on —"

"So you've just been taking credit for what a load of other people have done?" said Harry incredulously.

Lockhart started to explain, but Harry's head twinged.

"Enough! Villain or simpleton, I don't care. Let's go to the Chamber now."

Lockhart lifted his wand then, taking Harry by surprise, but Hermione disarmed the teacher with a spell first. Ron caught the wand and tossed it out an open window.

"What d'you want me to do?" said Lockhart weakly. "I don't know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There's nothing I can do."

"You're in luck," said Harry, forcing Lockhart to his feet at wandpoint. "We think _we_ know where it is. _And_ what's inside it. Let's go."

They marched Lockhart out of his office and down the nearest stairs, along the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall, to the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

Upon opening the door, they saw Antigone and Danzia.

"Hi guys," Harry said. "I know why we're here, what about you?"

"Figured out Moaning Myrtle was the girl killed," Antigone answered.

"Us too. Where's Angela?"

"Too scared to join us, after the spiders."

"Ah, okay. Probably best."

"What's with him? Why are you keeping him at wandpoint?"

"I suspected he's working with the Heir. Only now, he's proving to be so useless that I think he's innocent, but I don't care. He couldn't even disarm second year students!"

"Yeah, that's incompetent alright, even if one of you is Hermione. Why's he here, though?"

"Human shield, at this point."

"So where's the Chamber, d'ya reckon?"

"I dunno, let's ask Myrtle."

"Someone's talking about me," said the gloomy ghost, who was floating above one of the cubicles. "I don't like it when people talk about me behind my back. What are you all doing here?"

"To ask you how you died," said Harry.

Myrtle's whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.

"Ooooh, it was dreadful," she said with relish. "It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well. I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a _boy_ speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then —" Myrtle swelled importantly, her face shining. "I _died._ "

"How?" said Harry.

"No idea," said Myrtle in hushed tones. "I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away. …" She looked dreamily at Harry. "And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, she was sorry she'd ever laughed at my glasses."

"Where exactly did you see the eyes?" said Harry.

"Somewhere there," said Myrtle, pointing vaguely toward the sink in front of her toilet.

Everyone looked where she pointed, except Lockhart, who was plainly terrified.

It looked like an ordinary sink. They examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. And then Harry saw it: Scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.

"That tap's never worked," said Myrtle brightly as he tried to turn it.

"Harry," said Ron. "Say something. Something in Parseltongue."

Harry nodded; it made sense. Only, he wasn't sure he could do it without a real snake there. But he focused on the feeling of it, and spoke.

 _'Open,'_ he said.

At once the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move; the sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

Harry heard Ron gasp and looked up again. He had made up his mind what he was going to do.

"I'm going down there," he said.

Ron nodded. "Me too."

"And me," Hermione said. "If there's any chance at all Ginny's still alive, we need to go."

"Well you seem to have things covered, then, so I'll just be going now," Lockhart said. He made for the door, but all five of their wands were pointed at him, which drove him toward the opening.

"Remember," Harry said, "you're our human shield."

"Me? But why?"

"Better you than us."

"Um... good point there."

Ron jabbed him with his wand, making the wand spark dangerously, and Lockhart fell hollering down the hole.

"Really quite disgusting down here," they finally heard him comment.

Harry approached the lip of the pipe and sent a _scourgify_ spell down there before jumping in. It didn't really help, as he got dirty anyway, but he cleaned himself off with his wand when he stood up, keeping a wary eye on Lockhart as he did.

He looked around as the others all took turns coming down, using his lit wand to see in the dark. It was indeed disgusting, with mud and slime and copious rat bones everywhere. They were a long way down, possibly under the lake.

Directing the others to be careful, and shutting their eyes the moment they saw any movement, they continued on through the debris of centuries of snake poop and/or snake vomit, with Lockhart in the lead.

When they turned a corner, they saw something that made them all freeze in terror, but it turned out to just be an enormous snake skin. But while they had their guard down, Lockhart grabbed Ron's wand and jumped back, shouting " _Expelliarmus_!" at them.

The old, dying wand exploded violently, rocks falling noisily, people screaming and trying to flee. When the dust settled, Harry and Antigone found themselves on one side of a wall of fallen rock.

"Ron! Hermione! Danzia! Are you okay?"

"We're fine," said Danzia.

"Yeah, we're all fine," Ron said. "Except for Lockhart, though. Git got blasted by the wand, and... oh shit."

"What?"

"I... Harry, I think Lockhart is... wait, no, there's a pulse. But he's in a bad way, bleeding from his head."

"Well... try to stop the bleeding, see if Danzia can help with that. Then try to clear some rocks away. We'll be back later, but we've got to continue on, rescue Ginny if we can. If we're not back in an hour..."

"Gotcha," Danzia said. Ron repeated her.

"Come on," Harry said to Antigone.

They continued on, Harry feeling a lot of dread about what would be at the end of the tunnel, but feeling better for having someone here with him. He couldn't see her well in the dark, even with his wand light, but he knew Antigone was there.

He and his friend turned another bend, and saw a solid wall with two entwined serpents there, looking very lifelike. He said 'Open' to them in Parseltongue, and the two halves of the wall split open. Harry, shaking with worry, stepped inside.

As soon as he entered, he turned his head barely in time to see Antigone Disillusion herself and vanish from his vision. She winked at him just before it happened, which made him realize she had a plan. _Of course she has a plan,_ he thought, _she's a Slytherin._

He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place.

He worried that the basilisk might be behind a pillar somewhere, and found himself wishing he knew a spell to make himself temporarily blind. It didn't help his nerves that the columns looked like snakes, and all seemed to be alive.

Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall.

Harry had to crane his neck to look up into the giant face above: It was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, facedown, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

Every Griffindor instinct he had told him to run to her. But – whether because there was a friendly Slytherin in the room with him or something else, he decided to be more cautious. Remembering some TV shows he'd seen in the past, involving urban warfare, he emulated their behavior, hiding behind columns, looking around for the enemy, ready to shut his eyes at a moment's notice, before finally making it over to her pale body.

He checked for a pulse with his free hand, and while it was weak, it was there. He pointed his wand at her.

" _Rennervate,_ " he incanted. But nothing happened.

"She won't wake," said a soft voice.

Harry jumped and spun around on his knees.

A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Harry were looking at him through a misted window. But there was no mistaking him.

"Tom Riddle."

The boy nodded.

"You're doing something to her, aren't you? My friends were right, you _are_ the one opening the Chamber. You're Voldemort."

"Very good, very good indeed. Yes, Potter, I am the boy who grew up to become the Dark Lord Voldemort. And yes, I am doing something to her. Poor little fool thought I was a mysterious magical friend in a diary, and so she poured her heart into my Diary, which was just what I needed. I fed her a bit of myself in turn, and used her like a puppet. Ginny daubed threatening messages on walls, Ginny killed the school roosters, and set the basilisk on the mudbloods. Or at least, her body did. Ginny had no idea what she was doing, of course. But when she suspected what was going on, she wrote about it to me. At least, until she realized I had something to do with it. Then she tried to get rid of the diary, but it ended up in your hands. Which was excellent, as I have been wanting to meet you for a very long time."

"I don't doubt it."

"So now, enough about me. I want to talk about _you_ , Harry Potter."

Harry considered Ginny, who was fading fast.

"No."

"No? What do you mean, no?"

"You're probably going to ask me how I survived your killing curse, rendering the other you less than a ghost, right? Well I don't know the answer, and wouldn't tell you if I did. _BOMBARDA!_ "

The spell passed right through Riddle/Voldemort, doing nothing.

"Ouch, ouch, the pain the pain," Riddle said in a flat, sarcastic tone. "How ever shall I manage?" Then he grinned viciously. "That won't do much until Ginny is dead, and by then it will be too late. Then you will be faced with the greatest sorcerer who ever lived!"

"No I won't."

"Pardon?"

"You're not the greatest sorcerer who ever lived. That's Dumbledore."

Riddle glared at Harry.

"You're trying to goad me, Harry Potter. But I will have that information from you, if I have to wait for Ginny to die so I can torture it out of you."

"Okay, fine, so I fudged facts a little. Dumbledore said something about my mother dying to protect me being what saved me. But I don't know if that's all there is to it. If it was that simple, I wouldn't be the first person to survive the killing curse, or even the 100th. I don't have any other explanation, though."

"Hmm... well, that is enough for me to extrapolate what happened. But I shall be like you, and keep the information from you. You seem in a hurry to die, anyway, so I shall call the basilisk to kill you."

He turned to the giant statue of Salazar Slytherin and said in Parseltongue, _'Salazar Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four, speak to me!'_

Harry spotted the Diary, then, and grabbed it, tossing it somewhere where he could hit it with another bombarda spell. He hit it with the spell, but nothing happened.

"Foolish boy! That will not work! No spell you can squeeze out of your pitiful wand will hurt me!"

The statue's mouth was opening now, and Harry caught a glimpse of movement and something acid green, before he turned away, snatching up the Diary as he ran off. He wondered, as he hid from the basilisk, where Antigone had gone. He tried putting himself in her shoes, so to speak. She would want to observe the situation and then try to work out the best course of action. But what was that? He was only a second year student, and she was two years ahead of him. And what could a fourth year do in this situation? What could even a fully qualified wizard do against an old monster and his even older pet monster snake? About his only real hope was that Riddle was no more intelligent or skilled than he'd been at 16, but that assumed the elder Voldemort hadn't written in his Diary since then, to keep his younger self up to date.

Then there was a strange, ethereal birdsong, and a beautiful red and gold feathered bird flew into the room, dropping something on Harry before flying over to the basilisk and attacking it. At least, it sounded like an attack; Harry had his eyes closed, but he could hear inhuman screaming and wet sounds like talons through meat.

" _NO!"_ Harry heard Riddle screaming. " _LEAVE THE BIRD! LEAVE THE BIRD! THE BOY IS BEHIND YOU! YOU CAN STILL SMELL HIM! KILL HIM!"_

Harry opened his eyes to look at the basilisk, and saw that it was blinded. But he barely had time to process this fact before various destructive spells hit the basilisk's side from another place. He looked to the source and saw nobody, which told him Antigone was still Disillusioned. Smart, that; hard to hit a target you can't see.

But not smart enough. The basilisk was momentarily confused, probably smelling both him and Antigone, and not sure which to attack. But since her spells hadn't done more than annoy it, it went off in Harry's direction. He ran, holding the thing the bird (a phoenix?) had dropped on him, recognizing it as the Sorting Hat. That was absurd! The bird had at least blinded the basilisk, but what good was the Sorting Hat?

 _Well, information is power, and this hat contains the minds of the four House founders, so I guess I'll try that._

Harry found a place to hide, sliding between some bars that the basilisk wouldn't be able to fit through, and put the Hat on his head.

 _Help me! Sorting Hat, you're here for a reason! I need help! Something, anything!_

There was no answering voice. Instead, the hat contracted, as though an invisible hand was squeezing it very tightly.

Something very hard and heavy thudded onto the top of Harry's head, almost knocking him out. Stars winking in front of his eyes, he grabbed the top of the hat to pull it off and felt something long and hard beneath it.

A gleaming silver sword had appeared inside the hat, its handle glittering with rubies the size of eggs.

"This will do," he said. Then, in a sudden inspiration, he crept over to the current source of Antigone's spells, and found her by bumping into her.

"Ow! Harry, what are you doing?"

"Put this on your head! It gave me a sword, maybe it'll give you something, too."

"What?"

"Just do it!"

"Fine, fine. Cover me."

"Cover you?" he asked, confused.

"You know, cover fire?"

"Okay," he said. And, taking her literally, cast fireballs at the basilisk. Which, of course, bounced right off its hide, and it ignored them, still sniffing for him. But it bought time for Antigone to put on the hat and presumably ask for help.

"Ouch! What the...?"

It was very weird seeing a hat floating on a Disillusioned person. It was even weirder seeing said person pull a plain-looking sword out of the hat, and toss the hat aside. But the sword, for all it looked normal, wasn't. In Antigone's hands, its blade glowed red-hot and caught fire.

"A flaming sword. Pretty awesome," Antigone said. "Shall we?"

"Yes."

The two friends charged the basilisk, hacking pieces off the giant snake; the pieces Antigone hacked off became great burns on the creature's flank.

In rage, it turned its head and tried biting them, but that made its head their new target. One of them even managed to cut one of its enormous curved fangs off, where it went clattering away.

"You keep hacking its head, I have an idea," Harry said.

"Okay."

He stabbed the thing in the side and held on, remembering something he'd read in Dune by Frank Herbert, and hoping he wasn't just being an idiot. But sure enough, the basilisk turned its body away from the wound, pulling him up on top of it. Only then did he pull out the sword, and made his way up its length as best he could without falling over, up to the back of its head. It was a struggle, getting to the right spot, but when he did, he rammed the sword into the back of its neck, killing it. Antigone leapt backwards as its head fell.

"NOOOO!" Riddle screamed, at his snake being killed.

When Riddle calmed down, though, he sneered at them.

"No matter. Soon Ginny Weasley will be dead, and I will live again, then I will kill you both!"

Harry looked at the severed fang, and figured that any creature that could kill by looking at you might have venom powerful enough to destroy the undestroyable, so he grabbed the fang by its base, took out the Diary, and stabbed it with the fang.

There was a long, dreadful, piercing scream. Ink spurted out of the diary in torrents, streaming over Harry's hands, flooding the floor. Riddle was writhing and twisting, screaming and flailing and then...

He had gone. Harry's wand fell to the floor with a clatter and there was silence. Silence except for the steady _drip drip_ of ink still oozing from the diary. The basilisk venom had burned a sizzling hole right through it.

"We should come back down here sometime," Antigone said, after making herself visible again. "Basilisk venom, basilisk skin, and who knows what else... probably worth _millions_."

Harry shrugged, being too keen on going over to check on Ginny, who was waking up. Antigone, in the meantime, was staring thoughtfully at the flaming sword, trying to figure out how to turn it off.

When Ginny sat up, she looked bemusedly at Harry and the dead basilisk, and the ink on Harry's hands from the dying diary. Then she looked over at Antigone, who had put the Sorting Hat back on to ask it how to turn the flaming sword off. She drew a great, shuddering gasp and tears began to pour down her face.

"Harry — oh, Harry — I tried to tell you at b-breakfast, but I c- _couldn't_ say it in front of Percy — it was _me,_ Harry — but I — I s-swear I d-didn't mean to — R-Riddle made me, he t-took me over — and — _how_ did you kill that — that thing? W-where's Riddle? The last thing I r-remember is him coming out of the diary..."

"It's all right," said Harry, holding up the diary, and showing Ginny the fang hole, "Riddle's finished. Look! Him _and_ the basilisk. C'mon, Ginny, let's get out of here."

"Yeah, short stuff," Antigone said, the sword finally cooling down. "No lasting harm done. We're all alive."

"I'm going to be expelled!" Ginny wept as Harry helped her awkwardly to her feet. "I've looked forward to coming to Hogwarts ever since B-Bill came and n-now I'll have to leave and — _w-what'll Mum and Dad say_?"

"Probably be glad you're alive, I'd reckon."

Harry urged Ginny up and over to the Chamber entrance, where the phoenix was waiting for them. When they got up to it, he thought he recognized something in its eyes.

"Fawkes?" he asked.

It sang in response, its eyes twinkling like Dumbledore's did. He took that as a yes.

So the three of them started their way out the Chamber and into the tunnel, back to where the others were waiting, lit only by the light of their wands, and light emanating from the phoenix's feathers.

When they heard the sound of rocks being shifted, Harry called out.

"Ron! Hermione! Danzia! I've got Ginny! All three of us are alive!"

They heard three cheers, and saw a huge hole in the fallen stones. Ron and the two girls had been clearing stone the whole time, though right now Danzia was casting spells to keep what they'd cleared from causing another collapse, strengthening the remaining stone.

"Ginny!" Ron ran to her and hugged her. "You're alive! I don't believe it! What happened? How — what — where did that bird come from?"

"He belongs to Dumbledore. Not sure how he knew to show up, but he was a life saver."

"You've both got swords! How'd you get those?"

"From the Sorting Hat, oddly enough," Antigone said. "Mine doesn't look like much, but when needed, it catches fire. A flaming sword! Biblical power! And it's got Slytherin's crest on it. Harry got what I think is Griffindor's sword, and I got Slytherin's sword."

"We should get out of here, now. Where's Lockhart?"

"He's still where he was," Hermione said as everyone passed back through the hole to the escape side. "We got the bleeding to stop, but he hasn't woken up yet. Rennervate didn't work, and I'm afraid to try again, or to move him. We need to get Madam Pomfrey down here. Is it... is it safe to leave him here for now?"

"Well the Heir and the basilisk are both dead, if that's what you mean. But someone should stay with him until we can get Pomfrey down here, just in case of like, rats or something."

"I'll do it," Danzia volunteered.

"Okay, the rest of us will go on. I'll be back for you two."

"Understood."

Ginny and the others continued on to the place where the pipe came out at.

"Damn. How're we gonna get out, mate?"

Fawkes the phoenix had swooped past Harry and was now fluttering in front of him, his beady eyes bright in the dark. He was waving his long golden tail feathers. Harry looked uncertainly at him.

"He looks like he wants you to grab hold …" said Ron, looking perplexed. "But you're much too heavy for a bird to pull up there."

"Ronald, Fawkes is a phoenix," Hermione said. "They can carry immensely heavy loads, and their tears have healing pow-"

"Okay okay, I got it. Thanks, 'mione."

It took a bit of work, but they managed to daisy-chain themselves to the phoenix, who lifted them all up in such a way that Harry thought the bird had to have cast some sort of version of a feather-light charm.

When they alighted on the bathroom floor, Myrtle gasped.

"You're alive? Except... two of you are missing."

"Lockhart is wounded, so Danzia is tending to him. I'll go back for them later. For now, we have to get Madam Pomfrey."

"Why, Myrtle? You disappointed?"

"Well, I was just thinking, if you died, Harry, you're welcome to share my-"

"Thanks, but no thanks. Come on, let's go before the school is closed."

"Where now?" said Ron, with an anxious look at Ginny, who was still crying. Harry pointed.

Fawkes was leading the way, glowing gold along the corridor. They all strode after him, and moments later, found themselves outside Professor McGonagall's office.

Harry knocked and pushed the door open.

For a moment, as the five of them stood there, covered in slime, dust, and – in Harry's case – ink, there was silence. Then there was a scream, as Mrs. Weasley – tearful with joyous relief, flung herself at her daughter, hugging her like she'd never let go again.

"You saved her! How?"

"I think we'd all like to know that," said Professor McGonagall weakly.

Mrs. Weasley let go of Harry, who hesitated for a moment, then walked over to the desk and laid upon it the Sorting Hat, the ruby-encrusted sword, and what remained of Riddle's diary. Antigone followed him, putting her own sword down next to his.

It took an hour for the two of them to relate the tale of what had happened. As soon as they mentioned about Lockhart and Danzia being down there still – and how Harry had left the door open – McGonagall sent something silver out of the room, and soon Madam Pomfrey was there, being directed to where a patient was. She nodded, and left at once.

Then they got to the part of the story that included Ginny, and they both paused, looking at one another. How to tell the tale without implicating Ginny? But Antigone winked quickly at him and took over the tale, telling the truth but leaving out Ginny's involvement. Harry tried hard to keep his face from betraying his thoughts, which were that the story had a massive hole in it.

Instinctively, Harry looked at Dumbledore, who smiled faintly, the firelight glancing off his half-moon spectacles.

"What interests _me_ most," said Dumbledore gently, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."

Antigone frowned at Harry as if to say 'Gee thanks, I go to all that trouble and you ruin it. Silly kid.' But Harry didn't mind. They would have pointed out the hole in the story eventually.

"W-what's that?" said Mr. Weasley in a stunned voice. " _You-Know-Who_? En-enchant _Ginny_? But Ginny's not … Ginny hasn't been … has she?"

"It was this diary," said Harry quickly, picking it up and showing it to Dumbledore. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen. …"

Dumbledore picked up the diary, admiring the genius of it, which Harry thought a bit odd, but then, it was Dumbledore, who had always been odd. He listened with half his attention as the others put everything else together, about Riddle being Voldemort, and how that connected to the Diary.

Then Dumbledore was calling for Ginny to go to the hospital wing, and also mentioned that Madam Pomfrey had been in the process of giving the basilisk's victims Mandrake Restorative Draught when she'd been called away. Everyone was going to be okay!

After calling, also, for a celebratory feast, Dumbledore ushered the adults and Ginny out of the room.

"Misters Potter and Weasley," he said. "Ms. Dreyfuss, and Ms. Granger. You and Ms. McCullough will all be receiving special awards for services to the school, for your brave acts today. And one hundred points apiece for the three Griffindors, I think. Also, one hundred and fifty points to each of the Slytherins, which evens things out, as there were only two this time around. Hmm... that puts Griffindor in the lead on points. We can't have that, can we? I'll give Ms. Whitechapel another 50 points to Slytherin, so we once more have a tie between the two houses, and a shared house cup once more. Which is only fitting, as it was a joint effort."

Several of them cheered. Even Hermione, who hadn't cheered, beamed instead.

"Now, Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger, if you wouldn't mind going to the hospital wing too, just in case. There _was_ a rockslide, after all."

They nodded, and left. Dumbledore waited a few heartbeats after the door closed, then turned to Harry and Antigone.

"Sit down, you two, please."

They did sit, feeling nervous about what they were going to be talking with Dumbledore about.

"First of all, Harry, I want to thank you," said Dumbledore, eyes twinkling again. "You must have shown me real loyalty down in the Chamber. Nothing but that could have called Fawkes to you."

He stroked the phoenix, which had fluttered down onto his knee. Harry grinned awkwardly as Dumbledore watched him.

"Secondly, I want to remark upon something else that happened down there in the chamber. It is no surprise to me that someone as brave as Harry called Griffindor's sword in an hour of need. But for all that Griffindor House focuses on bravery over other things, the other Houses value it as well. If that were not the case, Ms. Dreyfuss, the Flaming Sword of Slytherin would not have come to you."

Antigone beamed.

"Of course, they are historical relics, and belong to the school, so you will not be getting them back."

Harry nodded, fully expecting that. Antigone looked disappointed, though.

"Now, Ms. Dreyfuss, I would like to talk with Mr. Potter alone, if you please."

"Um... Harry?"

"Go ahead."

"Okay," she said, smiling, taking one last look at the currently inactive sword she'd pulled out of

the Hat before she did.

"So, Harry," Dumbledore said when they were alone together. "You met Tom Riddle. I suspect he was rather eager to meet you."

"Yes. He wanted to know how I survived as a baby. I told him what you told me, that it was my mother dying to save me."

He briefly considered telling the man the rest of what he'd said, but decided that Dumbledore might not even know more himself, as unprecedented as the whole thing was.

"Did he make any other remarks? Did he, for instance, comment on your similarities?"

"Our similarities? What do you mean?"

"Well, you're both orphans, both half-bloods raised by Muggles, both highly intelligent, and when Riddle was young, his home situation was also rather less than ideal. Nobody at the orphanage ever liked him, you see, even as a small child. Even as a baby, the fact that he never cried rather disturbed a lot of people there, among other issues."

Harry was confused.

"Yeah, those are all good points, but... well, I'm black and he's not, and I have autism and he doesn't. Though I wouldn't call him normal by any means. Pretty sure he's either a psychopath or a sociopath, but I don't know which; I always get those two confused. But now you mention it, there is something else as well."

"What is that, Mr. Potter?"

"Well... I'm only telling you this because I get the sense you're wise enough to be discreet about it, and also it's been bugging me for a long time, the coincidence of it all, but... you see, I'm a Parselmouth."

Dumbledore nodded. "I did wonder, given what I know of what Tom has been up to over the years, and given the intelligence I've received that your scar hurts you sometimes, if perhaps Tom accidentally transferred some of his powers to you. It is rather too coincidental to be coincidence, you two having that same ability, when none before you in your family's history had the same gift."

"You knew my scar was hurting me?"

"Oh yes, I hear things here and there. I wasn't certain of it, though, until you confirmed it."

"So he accidentally gave me one of his powers the night he tried to kill me? How does that work?"

"Ah, well, that is rather complicated I'm afraid, and contains information that I do not think appropriate for one so young as yourself just yet, Harry, but in time I will fill you in on what little I know of the situation, and the much greater amount that I have deduced about it. But not today, I'm afraid."

Harry didn't like that much. He opened his mouth to argue, but then someone came into the room with a slam of the door and marched over to Dumbledore's desk. It was a white-blond man Harry instantly recognized as Draco's father. The man looked absolutely livid. And cowering behind his legs, heavily wrapped in bandages, was _Dobby._

"You! So you've come back, have you? The governors suspended you, and yet you dare-"

"Yes, Lucius, I am back. When Ginny Weasley was taken into the Chamber of Secrets, the other governors seemed to think I was the best man for the job after all. And very odd stories they told me, too; according to them, the only reason they voted me out to begin with was because you threatened their families if they did not comply."

Mr. Malfoy went even paler than usual, but his eyes were still slits of fury.

"So — have you stopped the attacks yet?" he sneered. "Have you caught the culprit?"

"We have," said Dumbledore, with a smile.

" _Well_?" said Mr. Malfoy sharply. "Who is it?"

"The same person as last time, Lucius," said Dumbledore. "But this time, Lord Voldemort was acting through somebody else. By means of this diary."

He held up the small black book with the large hole through the center, watching Mr. Malfoy closely. Harry, however, was watching Dobby.

The elf was doing something very odd. His great eyes fixed meaningfully on Harry, he kept pointing at the diary, then at Mr. Malfoy, and then hitting himself hard on the head with his fist.

"I see …" said Mr. Malfoy slowly to Dumbledore.

"A clever plan," said Dumbledore in a level voice, still staring Mr. Malfoy straight in the eye. "Because if Harry here" — Mr. Malfoy shot Harry a swift, sharp look — "and his friends hadn't discovered this book, why — Ginny Weasley might have taken all the blame. No one would ever have been able to prove she hadn't acted of her own free will. …"

Mr. Malfoy said nothing. His face was suddenly masklike.

"And imagine," Dumbledore went on, "what might have happened then. … The Weasleys are one of our most prominent pure-blood families. Imagine the effect on Arthur Weasley and his Muggle Protection Act, if his own daughter was discovered attacking and killing Muggle-borns. … Very fortunate the diary was discovered, and Riddle's memories wiped from it. Who knows what the consequences might have been otherwise. …"

Mr. Malfoy forced himself to speak.

"Very fortunate," he said stiffly.

And still, behind his back, Dobby was pointing, first to the diary, then to Lucius Malfoy, then punching himself in the head.

And Harry suddenly understood. He nodded at Dobby, and Dobby backed into a corner, now twisting his ears in punishment.

"Don't you want to know how Ginny got hold of that diary, Mr. Malfoy?" said Harry.

Lucius Malfoy rounded on him.

"How should I know how the stupid little girl got hold of it?" he said.

"Because you gave it to her," said Harry. "In Flourish and Blotts. You picked up her old Transfiguration book and slipped the diary inside it, didn't you? I didn't witness it, but I heard about the fight you picked with Mr. Weasley."

"Why don't you _prove it_!"

"Oh, no one will be able to do that," said Dumbledore, smiling at Harry. "Not now that Riddle has vanished from the book. On the other hand, I would advise you, Lucius, not to go giving out any more of Lord Voldemort's old school things. If any more of them find their way into innocent hands, I think Arthur Weasley, for one, will make sure they are traced back to you."

Lucius Malfoy stood for a moment, and Harry distinctly saw his right hand twitch as though he was longing to reach for his wand. Instead, he turned to his house-elf.

"We're going, Dobby!"

He wrenched open the door and as the elf came hurrying up to him, he kicked him right through it. They could hear Dobby squealing with pain all the way along the corridor. Harry stood for a moment, thinking hard. Then it came to him —

"Professor Dumbledore," he said hurriedly. "Can I give that diary _back_ to Mr. Malfoy, please?"

"Certainly, Harry," said Dumbledore calmly. "But hurry. The feast, remember. …"

Harry grabbed the diary and dashed out of the office. He could hear Dobby's squeals of pain receding around the corner. Quickly, wondering if this plan could possibly work, Harry took off one of his shoes, pulled off his slimy, filthy sock, and stuffed the diary into it. Then he ran down the dark corridor.

What happened next was both brilliant and kind of stupid. Brilliant, that part is obvious, but stupid that it worked. Mr. Malfoy took the diary out of the sock and – incredibly – he absent-mindedly tossed the sock to the side, and Dobby caught it. Which of course meant Dobby was free; and judging by Dobby's tone of voice and watering eyes when he said 'Dobby is free!' about himself, the elf was ecstatic about it.

Mr. Malfoy was, naturally, pissed as all Hell about it, and drew his wand, ready to hex Harry, but Dobby defended him with his elf magic, throwing the racist git to the ground and scaring him off at last. The man said something along the lines of "You haven't seen the last of me, you meddling kid" and took off in a huff.

Once Harry was safe from his old master, Dobby too took off, to enjoy his freedom. And Harry left for the impromptu feast Dumbledore had called for, wondering all the way there if the tie would persist until the end of term, then deciding Dumbledore would likely ensure it would.

As a school treat, and understandable given the circumstances of that year, Dumbledore canceled all the exams, leaving the rest of the term for everyone to enjoy and play in the sunshine until the Hogwarts Express would take them back home.

Professor Lockhart had suffered brain damage from the cave-in, and was still in a coma. Nobody knew if he would wake up, or when, or how he would be when he did. Lucius Malfoy had also been sacked as a school governor, for his part in the whole thing (the parts they could prove, anyway).

Ginny Weasley, on the other hand, was feeling a lot better. She had to see a mind healer because of the trauma of having her mind repeatedly violated, and then the stuff down in the chamber, but she was already doing a lot better by the end of the year.

Hagrid also came back from Azkaban, a little shaken up but otherwise unharmed.

On the train home, Harry found out why Percy had scared Ginny off when she was trying to tell Harry about her role in things, and also why Percy was so weird about it to Ron and Hermione; apparently he and the Ravenclaw prefect Penelope Clearwater were a couple, and Ginny had caught them snogging; Percy had thought Ginny was going to tell on him.

On a more positive note, Harry made sure to give his phone number to his friends, with instructions on how to use a phone for those who needed them, though he didn't think Dobby would be a problem anymore, and there was always Netty anyway.

Then, as they pulled into the station, he prepared himself for another summer with the Dursleys. He smiled when he saw Dumbledore at the platform waiting for him in another lurid three-piece suit that drew quite as much attention as the man's wizard robes would have, and took his headmaster's hand once they were somewhere safe to Apparate from. And with a twirl, they were away.

Endnote one: _Vocabo_ _acidum –_ the acid-conjuring spell – is my own creation, for this fic.

Endnote two: Sorry for the long wait. Hope the long chapter made up for it. :-)


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